Advanced Materials

Catalog description

This course will provide an introduction to advanced materials science and engineering, and will emphasize the breadth of this interdisciplinary, rapidly growing field. The synthesis, organization, and processing of materials can enable functional performance. The course material will overview the preparation of both organic and inorganic materials, and will later expand on the available methods for their characterization. Special emphasis will be given to the optimization of materials' performance and the relationship between the structure and properties of materials. The target-oriented design of materials will also be described through the underlying processes, structure, properties, and performance, with particular focus on applications in energy conservation, sustainability and biomedicine. About half of the course will be dedicated to soft materials (polymers, liquid crystals, biomaterials), and the remaining half will focus on hard materials (semiconductors, metals, alloys, and optical materials). Both the science-driven approach (used in materials science, polymer science) and the design-driven approach (used in engineering) will be presented.