Materials were, are and will always be essential for the development of our civilization. So much so that the different stages of human progress are called "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", "Iron Age", as well as, more recently, “Steel Age”, “Plastics Age”, “Silicon Age”, “Nanomaterials Age” and “Information Age". With scientific and technological development, the field of Materials Science  emerged, which involves the study and application of the correlations between processing, structure, properties and performance of materials.

Materials Science is closely related to traditional fields of engineering and science such as physics, metallurgy, chemistry, electricity and mechanics. In fact, the materials engineer needs basic knowledge in these fields. What distinguishes Materials Science is the fact that it involves the investigation of all the parameters that determine the properties of a given material during its useful life, that is extraction, manufacture, use and disposal or recycling. Thus, Materials Science studies the relationship between the structure of a material and its properties, whether they are mechanical, chemical, optical, electrical or magnetic.