1.
INTRODUCTION
Scientific and technological efforts in the synthesis and characterization of advanced materials (SACAM) are carried out by an interdisciplinary community whose contributions have been at the heart of progress in materials science and technology and whose future achievements will be central to the accomplishment of many technological goals. This community includes researchers in solid-state physics; metallurgy; ceramics; materials science; geoscience; electrical engineering; and inorganic, physical, organic, and solid-state chemistry. Only recently has awareness of group identity begun to develop within this community.
Synthesis, as used in modern solid-state science, includes not only the preparation of novel and well-characterized materials but also the precise control of microstructure and extrinsic properties. Characterization is the measurement of chemical and physical properties of materials, with the goal of achieving understanding of the same and similar materials based on their chemical bonding, atomic structure, and microscopic and macroscopic perfection. Characterization also provides a basis for specifying and improving materials for particular applications. By the term “advanced materials” we mean those materials that are at the forefront of science or technology at the time they are being studied. That is, advanced materials are those with novel properties that command interest from a variety of scientific and technological communities. Such materials now include the A-15, Chevrel phase, and ternary compound super-conductors; bimetallic cluster catalysts; intercalation compounds; silicon, gallium arsenide, TTF-TCNQ, and other quasi-one-dimensional materials; and metallic glasses.
The development of SACAM has differed significantly from that of most other areas of physical science. In these other areas, the majority of important advances in basic research have been made in universities, whereas for SACAM, industry and the national laboratories have been the sources of many of the important basic advances. This difference results from the interdisciplinary nature of SACAM, which calls for substantial research interaction among scientists working in materials preparation, characterization, and theory. Such interaction has been more readily achieved in industrial and national laboratories than in university laboratories. Though collaborative, interdisciplinary research is developing in universities, industry and the national laboratories will undoubtedly continue to play a major role in this field.
SACAM has been essential to the electronics revolution. The basic techniques for making Si and III–V compounds, for example, zone refining, float-zone crystal growth, crystal pulling, and liquid-phase epitaxy, have provided the materials foundation for transistors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and magnetic bubbles. SACAM has also contributed substantially to advances in a wide variety of technologies, including luminescent materials (the basic building blocks of the lamp industry), “super” ceramics (Lucolox and Pyroceram being noteworthy examples), materials for superconducting wire (which is used in making superconducting magnets and eventually, perhaps, motors, generators, and transmission lines), and families of heterogeneous catalysts essential for the modern conversion of petroleum feed stocks to fuels, petrochemicals, and polymeric materials.
Current problems associated with advanced communications, data processing, process control, energy production and storage, automation, catalysis, environmental improvement, and materials conservation and substitution, among others, comprise a set of challenges for the preparation and characterization of sophisticated new materials. In many cases, progress in these areas will be paced by the timely availability of well-characterized advanced materials.
In addition to these “need-driven” challenges, an equally compelling group of “opportunity-driven” challenges can be identified. Scientific progress in understanding real surfaces, the connection between chemical bonding and structure and useful properties of solids (for the design of new materials), the nature of the amorphous state, and the control and optimization of
the properties and effects of grain boundaries are all dependent on highly sophisticated materials preparation and characterization and theoretical understanding.
The urgent need of society for the new and improved technologies that could be based on advanced materials, and the scientific opportunities that well-characterized advanced materials would offer, clearly indicate the desirability of an increase in the size and sophistication of the interdisciplinary community dedicated to the preparation and characterization of such materials. The challenges and opportunities associated with SACAM can be met adequately only if significantly greater numbers of scientists with diverse perspectives are trained in the areas relevant to SACAM. This increase will occur only as a broader awareness of the accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities of SACAM develops within the entire scientific community.
In the future, new materials with greater perfection and purity and more stringent characterization requirements will be increasingly needed. The facilities for the preparation and characterization of such materials will necessarily be more complex and expensive than present facilities. Thus, while it is important to attract researchers to SACAM in larger numbers, it is also important that these scientists be provided with adequate resources, especially support personnel and state-of-the-art instrumentation.
As we have already noted, SACAM is intrinsically interdisciplinary in nature, and the kind of collaborative interaction among researchers from diverse but related fields that is required is currently found to a much greater extent in industry than in academia. For the continuing healthy growth of SACAM, university researchers must be encouraged to participate in such interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Con-comitantly, university-industry communication and interaction for the purpose of such research must be improved.
In this report emphasis is placed on university-industry relationships. However, it must be recognized that the national laboratories provide an excellent environment for a cross-disciplinary role in condensed-matter science and will become even more important in this area with the establishment of major facilities such as synchrotron light sources, high-intensity neutron sources, and high-voltage electron microscopes. A study of the role of national laboratories in SACAM is being carried out by the Department of Energy.
In the following four chapters we summarize the conclusions and recommendations resulting from the SACAM Workshop and the extensive discussion it engendered (Chapter 2), the scientific and technological accomplishments of SACAM (Chapter 3), the societal needs and future opportunities that SACAM will face (Chapter 4), and human and material resource needs for effective SACAM (Chapter 5).
