Chemistry and materials research are the sciences of stuff—perhaps
the only word that does justice to the myriad molecules and materials that
we find in the world around us.
Certainly there’s a multitude of scientists and engineers
who are working with stuff. They include the metallurgists
who develop lightweight, corrosion-resistant, high-strength
alloys; the polymer chemists who create plastics strong enough
to replace the metal in your car’s side panels and
the solid state chemists who create new materials for lightweight
batteries.
They include the condensed matter physicists and chemists
who discover new superconductors and liquid crystals; the
industrial chemists who mass-produce everything from fuels
to pharmaceuticals and the civil engineers who devise improved
concrete for longer-lasting highways.
They include the electrical engineers who make semiconductor
devices smaller, faster and cheaper with each passing year;
the ceramists who create high-temperature coatings for turbine
blades and the biomedical engineers designing implants that
integrate with natural tissue using the body’s own
repair mechanisms.
And, of course, they include the laboratory scientists
who develop novel substances like artificial bone for prosthetic
implants, conducting polymers for "printable" electronic
devices, self-assembling nano-fibers for nerve repair, nanoscale
iron particles for toxic waste cleanup and porous metal-organic
composites for hydrogen storage.
Still, despite this endless variety of particular interests
and specialized subdisciplines, the sciences of stuff do
have a fundamental unity. They are tied together by the common
goal of understanding and controlling everything about
molecules and materials, from the making and breaking of
chemical bonds on timescales of less than a nanosecond, to
the aging and corrosion of steel bridge supports on timescales
of more than a decade.
And if researchers are nowhere close to achieving that goal--yet--they
have made remarkable progress over the years, thanks in no
small measure to support from the National Science Foundation
(NSF). Indeed, with its 28 Materials Research Science
and Engineering Centers, its 14 Nanoscale Science and
Engineering Centers, its National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
and its funding for thousands of university-based laboratories
and consortia, NSF is helping them take on some of the toughest
challenges in the field today:
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