Electronic Materials: A New Era in Materials Science

This is a personal, innovative, and exciting view of the current status of the field of electronic materials. It provides a graduate-level introduction to new classes of electronic materials and indicates the most promising new avenues of theoretical and experimental investigation, capturing the challenge of the coming age of modern materials science. Researchers in the field of electronic materials will find here a general introduction to some of the most modern techniques of computer-assisted modeling and the most powerful experimental characterization tools. Nonspecialists will appreciate the broad survey and should find this book useful as a reference work.

Modem materials science is exploiting novel tools of solid-state physics and chemistry to obtain an unprecedented understanding of the structure of matter at the atomic level. The direct outcome of this understanding is the ability to design and fabricate new materials whose properties are tailored to a given device ap plication. Although applications of materials science can range from low weight, high strength composites for the automobile and aviation industry to biocompat ible polymers, in no other field has progress been more strikingly rapid than in that of electronic materials. In this area, it is now possible to predict from first principles the properties of hypothetical materials and to construct artificially structured materials with layer-by-Iayer control of composition and microstruc ture. The resulting superlattices, multiple quantum wells, and high temperature superconductors, among others, will dominate our technological future. A large fraction of the current undergraduate and graduate students in science and engi neering will be directly involved in furthering the revolution in electronic mate rials. With this book, we want to welcome such students to electronic materials research and provide them with an introduction to this exciting and rapidly de veloping area of study. A second purpose of this volume is to provide experts in other fields of solid state physics and chemistry with an overview of contemporary research within the field of electronic materials."

This graduate-level introduction to new classes of electronic materials captures the excitement of the coming age of modern materials science. It offers a broad survey of the field, an introduction to modern experimental and computational methods, and useful reference information.