Material Matters
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What is Materials Chemistry Xiaoyue Xiao Examining the Question
In the past 10 years, materials chemistry has attracted worldwide interest as a new and important interdiscipline resulting from the confluence of two streams: chemistry, and materials science and engineering. Materials chemistry is clearly an emerging subdiscipline, related to both chemistry and materials science; however, the exact definition of materials chemistry remains a question. L.V. Interrante in 1992 referred to materials chemistry as "chemistry directed at the preparation, processing, and analysis of materials.1 This was a common viewpoint at that time which should be developed further as research in this area flourishes. I am fortunate to be involved in research and teaching of materials chemistry, but at the same time I am somewhat perplexed. In 1994 I was asked to start a course called "Materials Chemistry" for senior students in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University. When I entered the classroom the first question I was asked was "What is the definition of materials chemistry?" Since no textbook was available, I faced difficulty preparing lectures and my students had difficulty learning the subject. The only choice I had was to reorganize part of the contents of New Directions in Solid State Chemistry2 and
supply some review articles.With little satisfaction after one semester, I realized the urgent need for a real textbook on materials chemistry and for a satisfactory definition of that term. To understand the concept of materials chemistry, we can review the definitions of chemistry and of materials. Chemistry is defined as "the science that deals with the composition of properties of substances,"3 and focuses traditionally on atomic and molecular interactions, that is, study at the microscopic level. On the other hand, materials are "the substance or substances jut of which a thing is constructed,"3 that s, study at the macroscopic level, traditionally, several well-established subireas of chemistry are involved in materiils study, for example solid state chemstry, surface chemistry, and polymer /IRS BULLETIN/DECEMBER 1996
chemistry. Each has its own direction and specific emphasis. Among these subareas, the definition of solid state chemistry seems to be closest to that for materials chemistry. In 1986 C.N.R. Rao and J. Gopalakrishnan defined the latter as follows: "Solid state chemistry deals with a variety of solids, inorganic as well as organic; the solids can be crystalline or non-crystalline....It is mainly concerned with the development of new methods of synthesis, new ways of identifying and characterizing materials and of describing their structure, and above all, with new strategies for tailor-making materials with desired and controllable properties...."2 Here, synthesis, characterization, and processing for controllable properties of materials are emphasized. This definition is similar to that of Interrante's. The Traditional Role of Chemistry in Materials Science
As a new subdiscip
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