Synthesis and Characterization of Advanced Materials (1984)

Based on the considerations outlined in Chapter 1, we conclude that to facilitate the timely response of the SACAM community to the variety of challenges and opportunities we expect it to encounter, it is necessary to

• Attract potentially able researchers into SACAM and ensure that they receive rigorous, in-depth training in one of the disciplines central to the field. Training should be sufficiently broad to allow them to communicate and interact effectively with collaborators in related disciplines.

• Improve educational opportunities in the disciplines relevant to SACAM, especially solid-state chemistry.

• Encourage interdisciplinary research at the interuniversity and intrauniversity levels and increased industry-university cooperation.

• Establish centers where state-of-the-art materials characterization capability is available to the SACAM community on an ongoing basis.

• Encourage and broaden joint research efforts with other countries, especially in solid-state chemistry and advanced materials, in which other countries have much to offer.

Based on the SACAM Workshop Panel Reports (Part II), the extensive discussion that accompanied their preparation,

and the resulting conclusions, we developed three categories of recommendations.

The first, self-help, includes steps that the materials research community should take to strengthen SACAM to meet future challenges, opportunities, and needs. The second, institutional measures, deals with university and industry actions that could help to ensure a consistent flow of high-quality research in the basic sciences and technologies relevant to SACAM, improve interdisciplinary and collaborative interactions, and attract and train new generations of solidly grounded, innovative researchers and technologists in SACAM and related fields. The third, funding, suggests some modifications of funding practices that could strengthen selected portions of SACAM research, thus helping to provide a solid base of research, technology, and pedagogy for the challenges of the future.

Self-help. The consensus of the SACAM Workshop participants and the ensuing discussion was that SACAM could be improved through self-help measures that do not require significant new funds or institutional rearrangements. Specifically, for the continued development of SACAM it is necessary to attract highly qualified students in increasing numbers and able researchers in disciplines related to the field. This objective can best be achieved by the concerted actions of the SACAM community. On the basis of the SACAM Workshop Panel Reports and the consequent discussion, we offer the following recommendations for such actions by the SACAM community:

1. Speakers from industry, national laboratories, and academia, representing a variety of research and technology areas within the general field of SACAM, should be made available to universities and colleges for seminars and short courses. A central file of SACAM speakers and topics should be maintained and well publicized.

2. The publication in educational journals of tutorial articles and descriptions of undergraduate laboratory experiments convering the various aspects of SACAM should be strongly encouraged.

3. The publication of texts and monographs for use in introducing the variety of subjects relevant to SACAM should be encouraged.

4. SACAM workshops, short courses, and symposia for researchers in the field and related disciplines should be made available on a regular basis by the appropriate scientific societies.

We note that implementation of some aspects of these recommendations has already begun. There have been numerous symposia on solid-state chemistry at recent American Chemical Society (ACS) meetings. The first and second Gordon Research Conferences on Solid State Chemistry were held in the summers of 1980 and 1982, and a Gordon Research Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Solids was held in the summer of 1981. In its August 1980 issue, the Journal of Chemical Education published 14 papers from a symposium on Solid State Chemistry in the Undergraduate Curriculum.

Institutional measures. Universities and colleges should be encouraged to initiate, maintain, and improve high-quality research activities in SACAM-related disciplines. It was the view of the participants in the SACAM workshop that solid-state chemistry is particularly in need of such attention. It provides the scientific foundation for synthesis and chemical characterization leading to new materials; however, as a distinct subject of study and research it is represented in only a few universities in the United States. Therefore, we propose the following activities:

1. Invite SACAM scientists to be regular seminar speakers, visiting lecturers, and visiting professors, particularly on joint appointments from industry.

2. Include SACAM topics and laboratory experiments in undergraduate and graduate courses and offer introductory solid-state chemistry as an integral part of the curriculum. Examples of such activities are the laboratories at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where students prepare an integrated circuit starting with a Si chip, and the introductory solid-state chemistry course offered at MIT, which is described in Appendix E.

3. Encourage the addition of scientists in the various disciplines relevant to SACAM to university staffs in tenure track positions.

4. Establish mechanisms to encourage and facilitate the participation of faculty members in collaborative university-university, university-industry, university-national laboratory research projects relevant to SACAM.

5. Introduce students in SACAM to the interdisciplinary nature of the field as early as possible.

Funding. Funding is potentially a powerful instrument for change. The following recommendations are directed principally toward development of interdisciplinary research in the various aspects of SACAM:

1. Funding agencies should encourage the establishment of the new state-of-the-art SACAM thrust areas and centers and the upgrading of existing facilities. This stimulus is desirable because effective research in modern synthesis and characterization generally requires an interdisciplinary program, which in turn requires a critical core of instrumentation, synthesis capabilities, and characterization skills. Funding agencies must carefully monitor the materials research laboratories (MRLs) and regional centers to ensure that their efforts are appropriately focused and that needed interdisciplinary team interactions occur.

2. Proposals for SACAM research are generally interdisciplinary or interinstitutional or both in nature. Such proposals often fall between the cracks in the deliberations preceding funding decisions. The funding agencies should make a conscious effort to prevent this situation and, in fact, should strongly encourage interdisciplinary and interinstitutional research. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Projects program appears to be a useful vehicle for encouraging the academic-industry exchanges so vital to SACAM research.

3. Interaction and cooperation with selected foreign laboratories, especially those conducting research in solid-state chemistry, where local strengths could benefit U.S. activities, should be encouraged by provision of funds for this purpose and by appropriate modifications to institutional arrangements where necessary. The NSF Cooperative Science program seems to be a useful effort of this sort.

4. Funding should be targeted to young faculty members in SACAM. The usual criteria of excellence, originality, and career potential would be fully appropriate for use in making decisions on support. Sabbatical and exchange support by funding agencies could be particularly important in SACAM, because exciting new basic research is often performed at foreign and industrial institutions.

5. Particular attention should be given to providing adequate support personnel and state-of-the-art instrumentation. The provision of adequate support personnel invariably results in an increase in program productivity

much beyond its cost. State-of-the-art instrumentation frequently also leads to increased program productivity beyond its cost, particularly for lower-priced (below $50,000) and moderately priced ($50,000–$250,000) equipment. Judicious equipment support in these ranges by the funding agencies could result in significant improvements in the quality and quantity of SACAM research, particularly that conducted at universities. In this regard, the DOD-University Research Instrumentation Program is a noteworthy development. This program began in fiscal year 1983 and is budgeted at $30 million per year for 5 years. Approximately 25 percent of this funding is for instrumentation related to advanced materials research.