Metastable Materials: Processing, Structure, and Properties

Catalog description

The thermodynamics and kinetics of the synthesis and stability of a variety of important metastable materials - those materials that are not in the lowest free energy state for the composition and structure - will be described. The common methods for non-equilibrium processing will be covered. A significant part of the course will be devoted to amorphous materials, including their synthesis, structure, and properties. Other topics will include quasi-crystalline materials, metastable crystalline materials, and shape memory alloys. As background for shape memory alloys, diffusionless phase transformations with emphasis on martensitic transformations will be reviewed.