Synthesis and Characterization of Advanced Materials (1984)

The development of new materials usually involves a synergistic interaction between researchers with preparative skills (often chemists) and researchers with characterization skills (often physicists). We must continue to depend on this interaction of people, often from different disciplines, who are trained at the frontier of knowledge in these disciplines. A major concern is how to foster fruitful interaction between scientists from different disciplines; this chapter addresses this problem.

We consider various ways to foster such synergistic interaction. First, we examine the collaborative enterprise, particularly the key impediments to collaboration between scientists with differing backgrounds. Second, we briefly consider how education can facilitate interaction. Next we consider other means of encouraging interaction between the “preparers” and the “characterizers.” We then discuss the problem of funding interdisciplinary research, new funding needs, and more effective use of funds. Last, we present our major observations and recommendations.

The preparation and utilization of advanced materials usually involves an interplay of individuals, each of whom has a distinctive background and set of skills. Figure 1 illustrates the usual situation, where S represents the synthesizer, C the characterizer, T the

FIGURE 1 Elements in the SACAM collaborative enterprise.

theorist or other provider of the intellectual stimulus for the interaction of S with C, and A the applications. Although the interaction of any two of the components can initiate the eventual tetrahedral clustering represented, such collaboration can proceed only if it is adequately funded.

We shall concentrate on the relationship between synthesizer and characterizer, S and C, although other, perhaps equally important, analyses could be made for the other one-to-one interactions. The first question is why the components of the situation need be as they are. For example, why not train an interdisciplinary individual who is both synthesizer and characterizer? There may be circumstances in which this would be practical, but usually the creation of new advanced materials depends for many reasons on the interaction of researchers trained in separate disciplines. Perhaps the most important is that the preparation and characterization of advanced materials is carried out most effectively when the latest knowledge and expertise from each of the parent disciplines is applied. The range of possible advanced materials is virtually unlimited. Even for a specific application, a material developed on the basis of capabilities in one discipline, say metallurgy, might be inferior to a material that calls for capabilities in another discipline, such as biochemistry. Moreover, a given class of new materials might benefit from a thorough survey by characterizers from a variety of disciplines. Usually, the best course is to bring the specialists together.

Perhaps the single most important impediment to interdisciplinary collaboration is the peer review

effect. Status, rewards, and funding are usually determined by the evaluations of knowledgeable specialists. Therefore, each individual will strive to maintain the greatest possible freedom of action for his research. To be a mere supplier or supporter in the work of another is to run the risk of being perceived as without a program, without initiative, uncreative, a technician, and so on. Consequently, any collaboration should be so arranged that each participant can cope effectively with these peer pressures.

Another major impediment is the language barrier. The specialized languages (jargon) of science are increasingly a barrier to communication between disciplines and sub-disciplines. The language barrier that limits communication between preparers and characterizers of materials is often substantial. In dealing with this impediment, as with peer pressures, organizational and funding arrangements can help, but the essential requirement is the education of each specialist in the essentials of the disciplines of the other specialists. The theoretician can play a key role here. Theoreticians (model builders, knowledgeable interdisciplinary entrepreneurs, and other providers of intellectual stimuli), if they are “multilingual” and have the ability to explain the intellectual challenges inherent in an interdisciplinary program, can provide the greatest help in overcoming impediments to interdisciplinary interaction.

Other impediments are largely institutional and organizational and involve provision of appropriate technical support. External funding is usually also crucial. Suggestions on how to surmount these impediments follow.

Universities provide the major opportunities for educational efforts to foster the synergistic interaction of preparers and characterizers of advanced materials. Yet, university researchers are usually subject to peer-pressure effects to a higher degree than researchers in other organizations and institutions. Special organizational efforts and funding arrangements are necessary to provide a favorable university setting for interdisciplinary work.

Where there is active interdisciplinary research, young scientists being trained in the individual disciplines can be brought into a collaborative effort

while their attitudes are still in a formative stage. Such experience would expose the trainee to the dynamic interplay among the preparative and characterization disciplines and, as already noted, would usually involve intellectual challenges to the participants from each of the disciplines. Again, it is clear that a theoretician, conversant in the language of each discipline and aware of problems in the activities of each specialist, could help to initiate and foster such collaborative ventures.

The major aim should be to overcome the language barrier. The first requirement is to provide the incentive to make the effort, probably best done by involving the participants (students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty) in mature and detailed investigations (i.e., in learning by doing). This kind of activity should be backed up with an appropriate curriculum. Since the most forbidding language barrier is that between chemistry and the solid-state sciences, particularly physics, the needs of the chemist and the experimental solid-state physicist provide examples. Texts that translate or interpret the language of solid-state physics into the language of chemistry, and vice versa, are urgently needed and should be helpful. Interpretative courses in solid-state physics (which would, in part, amount to language courses) should be provided for students with a standard background in inorganic and physical chemistry. These courses should require the same standards expected of physics students. The aim would be to provide the chemist with fundamental understanding of the operating principles of his physicist counterpart and so enable him to participate creatively in collaborative research. For the same reasons, and in a similar way, the physicist should be trained in the language and operating principles of the synthesis chemist.

The organizational and funding arrangements to foster interdisciplinary work on advanced materials in universities should be directed toward the cooperation of researchers in disciplines ranging from metallurgy to biochemistry and for the widest possible range of physical studies. The science of advanced materials may eventually benefit from contributions by the biological sciences as much as it has already from chemistry.

Since industrial organizations are usually oriented toward specific goals and must make a profit to survive,

collaborative enterprise usually lies at the heart of their efforts. The situation is different in academic institutions, where the emphasis is on the encouragement of the individual and the unique contributions he or she can make.

The smaller industrial laboratory faces the need to keep its scientists who are engaged in applied research aware of the latest developments in their parent disciplines. One way of dealing with this need is for industrial laboratories to develop relationships with academic institutions, such as the equivalent of the university professor’s sabbatical leave. An industrial scientist would also bring new viewpoints and awareness of practical needs to the university research group. Joint industry-university research projects should be encouraged, and industrial researchers should be invited to participate in and give university seminars.

The growing sophistication and cost of apparatus used in the charaterization, and occasionally the preparation, of materials also present problems. In some instances, not even the largest companies can afford valuable modern facilities (e.g., a synchrotron and its associated instrumentation). More major centers for sophisticated state-of-the-art instrumentation, permanently staffed by dedicated and expert personnel, should be established. Industrial scientists should be encouraged to use such facilities. However, the need for an industrial laboratory to protect its proprietary interests must receive recognition when user contracts are drawn up. Again, cooperation between academic and industrial groups in sponsoring, funding, and using common facilities and instrumentation should result in benefits to all. More and expanded materials research laboratories (MRLs), centered on major campuses, might be an appropriate step.

Of particular concern are institutional and organizational innovations that might be applied in academic institutions to foster the interaction of preparer and characterizer. Given the importance of peer pressure and the all-too-common interdepartmental competition, special efforts are necessary to encourage collaboration. Funding arrangements can be especially helpful, but institutional and organizational improvements can also be made.

Setting up dedicated, well-manned, and continuously updated facilities (e.g., MRLs) outside the exclusive domain of any department or speciality group would overcome many difficulties. Such facilities would probably be of greater benefit to the synthesizer than

the characterizer. In most cases, they would provide sophisticated and costly instrumentation on a routine service basis that would otherwise be largely unavailable. These facilities would also provide instrumentation for the characterizer. Such facilities should be administered with advice from a committee of users. Probably the most important aspect of such facilities would be service.

High-quality services require that the individuals providing the services have well-defined roles. It is particularly important to recognize that the success of a collaborative enterprise may depend more on routine or repetitive operations being well done than on intellectual input. Thus, a dependable person in a supportive role should be recognized as a valuable component of the enterprise.

Although most support personnel in a collaborative facility would be experts in instrumentation, in some centers it might be desirable to have a person whose province is preparative work. (Preparative work can be defined as the production of a known material in a particular form—single crystal, thin film, ultrapure specimen, control-doped specimen—as well as synthesis of a novel material.) This suggestion reflects recognition of the long-term nature of most synthesis enterprises. There is still much art, as well as science, in preparative activities. Time is needed for the frequently necessary trial-and-error process, and some synthesis reactions, even when the conditions are well defined, are inherently slow, because the kinetics for the growth processes are slow. Moreover, the skills and experience built up with the development of one material often will be of little value in the synthesis of another. These considerations discourage many from specializing in the preparative or synthesis aspect of research in advanced materials. Further, the low status frequently accorded those who do preparative work makes recruitment even more difficult. This situation could be the major reason for the lack of vigor and status of solid-state chemistry compared with solid-state physics in many U.S. universities.

Sound management, both in industry and academia, is crucial to the success of the collaborative enterprise. The good manager will look for compatible personalities as well as complementary knowledge and skills. The manager should also emphasize the appropriate incentives for the collaboration, be these profit or intellectual challenge. In the healthiest arrangement, the management

position would be viewed as a service position to be filled by the person best able to provide the required services or expertise for a given period. A change in the required services or expertise could bring a change in management. With such an arrangement, industrial laboratories would be more responsive to changes in corporate goals, and universities would be more responsive to changes in research directions. An added benefit would be the improved situation of the working scientist whose relationship with his supervisor would be more nearly a peer relationship.

An appropriate professional organization, perhaps a division of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, or the Materials Research Society, could do much to bring together scientists with the diversity of backgrounds needed in the study and development of advanced materials. Such an organization could also fulfill an important educational role with its scientific meetings and publications. It could enhance awareness of and encourage support for the interdisciplinary activities that it represents by arranging for the funding of prizes and awards for excellence of research.

Funds, properly disbursed, can foster the desired collaboration between synthesizer and characterizer. Providers of support should encourage (or even require) the following characteristics of SACAM collaborative groups:

1. A group should be of sufficient size to provide the breadth of expertise needed for solution of the problems under investigation.

2. Each of the participants in the collaborative enterprise should be willing to play a dual role of active research and of service to collaborators.

3. Because research on advanced materials requires a broad-based approach to both preparation and characterization, a variety of experimental capabilities should be available. Theoretical expertise should also be available, for theory is crucial in providing intellectual stimuli for collaboration and sustaining collaboration.

4. Technicians, staff personnel, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students should be included in

a working SACAM group to ensure a well-balanced, self-sustaining operation. The proper combination of participants should provide for

1. Sample preparation for various physical measurements,

2. Routine characterization,

3. Continuity of broad-based programs,

4. Sufficient flexibility to explore problems in new areas.

Some of the obstacles to this kind of interdisciplinary research could be overcome by different funding arrangements. These obstacles include the following:

1. Funding agencies often are not organized to handle large-group interdisciplinary proposals.

2. Peer review of collaborative interdisciplinary proposals is often unsatisfactory within the usual discipline-oriented funding structures.

3. Isolated investigators and small institutions are unable to mount efforts of critical size.

4. Larger programs often require partial support from several different agencies.

5. The total funding available for basic SACAM research is less than is commensurate with the potential scientific and technological benefits.

The particularly serious aspect of present funding policy is its generally short-term nature. It is difficult to provide guarantees of job security for the technical support staff. The requirement of funding renewal on a short-term basis also discourages those ventures that require a long-term investment. Many preparative projects are of this type. Some possible solutions are as follows:

1. Multi-investigator, interdisciplinary grants should be encouraged. In SACAM, such programs are likely to be more efficient and productive than the traditional single-investigator project. Specifically,

   1. Collaborative efforts within a single institution should be encouraged.

   2. Interinstitutional grants (with travel funds) should be available to help solve the problem of isolated investigators.

   3. Because technicians and staff personnel require longer-term funding, grants of longer duration,

(at least 3 years) are needed. Grants that are not renewed should be phased out gradually over a period of a year or so rather than abruptly.

2. Interdisciplinary units should be established within the funding agencies. The NSF Division of Materials Research is a successful example of an attempt to encourage such endeavors. The peer review process employed by such units should include advisory panel representatives of the involved disciplines.

3. Partial support from several sources should be allowed and encouraged.

4. There should be an increase in overall support commensurate with the current growth and potential rewards of the field.

5. Centralized instrumentation centers should be kept up to date and manned by dedicated personnel. Provision should also be made in funding for the travel costs of the users of such facilities.

The synthesis and characterization of advanced materials will continue to depend on the synergistic interaction of specialists in preparation and characterization. We believe that the barriers to interaction can largely be overcome by the following steps:

1. Funding should be specifically earmarked for interdisciplinary projects in SACAM and should provide for long-term preparation projects and long-term support personnel.

2. Peer review procedures appropriate to the interdisciplinary character of the work, including an advisory panel that is representative of the involved disciplines, should be employed.

3. Centralized instrumentation centers oriented toward service should be established and maintained at the state of the art.

4. Institutional and organizational changes should be made to facilitate the interaction of characterizer and preparer. Such changes should recognize the prime importance of incentives, such as profitable applications, particularly for industrial scientists, and intellectual stimuli and challenges to overcome the barriers to collaborative interdisciplinary research in SACAM.

5. Efforts should be made to improve communications, that is, lower the language barriers, among the disciplines involved in SACAM. Some possibilities for doing this include the following:

   1. Involvement of scientists, at the earliest practical stage of their training, in interdisciplinary projects.

   2. Encouragement of the preparation of texts to educate the synthesis chemist in the principles and language of solid-state physics and to educate the solid-state physicist in the principles and language of inorganic and physical chemistry.

   3. Organization of interdisciplinary seminars in which industrial scientists present material or participate in discussion.

6. Industrial laboratories, particularly the smaller ones, should consider encouraging their scientific personnel to spend periods of leave in academic institutions. This policy would help to keep industrial personnel scientifically up to date and would also bring academic personnel into greater contact with the problems of the industrial world.