Materials science and engineering is a multidisciplinary activity that has emerged in recognizable form only during the past two decades. Practitioners in the field develop and work with materials that are used to make things—products like machines, devices, and structures. More specifically:

Materials science and engineering is concerned with the generation and application of knowledge relating the composition, structure, and processing of materials to their properties and uses.

The multidisciplinary nature of materials science and engineering is evident in the educational backgrounds of the half-million scientists and engineers who, in varying degree, are working in the field. Only about 50,000 of them hold materials-designated degrees;* the rest are largely chemists, physicists, and nonmaterials-designated engineers. Many of these professionals still identify with their original disciplines rather than with the materials community. They are served by some 35 national societies and often must belong to several to cover their

*We define a “materials-designated degree” as one containing in its title the name of a material or a material process or the word “material.” Examples include metallurgy, ceramics, polymer science or engineering, welding engineering, and materials science or engineering. Thus far, virtually all materials-designated degrees are in matallurgy or ceramics.

professional and technical needs. This situation is changing, if slowly. One recent indication was the formation of the Federation of Materials Societies, in 1972. Of the 17 broadly based societies invited to join, nine had done so by October 1973.

Materials are exceptionally diverse. The scope of materials science and engineering spans metals, ceramics, semiconductors, dielectrics, glasses, polymers, and natural substances like wood, fibers, sand, and stone. For our purposes we exclude certain substances that in other contexts might be called “materials.” Typical of these are foods, drugs, water, and fossil fuels. Materials as we define them have come increasingly to be classified by their function as well as by their nature; hence, biomedical materials, electronic materials, structural materials. This blurring of the traditional classifications reflects in part our growing, if still imperfect, ability to custom-make materials for specific functions.

Materials science deals with the structural analysis of materials, the discovery of new material substances and their application to various industries. The materials engineering field looks into relationships between properties of materials and their mechanical structure at the atomic level.

Professional scientists and engineers develop materials such as metals, ceramics, semiconductors, polymers, composites and biomaterials that other engineers need for their designs. The right materials help drive product innovation in all industries from aircrafts, medical equipment, gadgets, to musical instruments and environmental friendly technologies.

Materials engineering is based on supportive areas such as thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and nanoscience. Study programmes in material sciences combines in-depth knowledge of the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of materials with the training in production techniques and the selection of appropriate materials for a wide range of applications. Universities offer a wide range of specialisations in the field, such as magnetic and nano-materials, structural materials, electronic materials and interfaces, energy materials and application, biomaterials, and more.

Graduates learn how materials behave and how their properties change during the process of raw materials becoming designed products. Most professionals work in offices using computer-aided design (CAD) software or in development labs, where they have access to cutting-edge equipment. Others work as supervisors in factories or research institutes.

In the last few decades, materials science and technology develope and express their thoughts over the world and shows the needs of  good msterials in every section of science and engineering such as nanotechnology, biomaterials, advance and super alloy, thin film techonology, biopolymers and so on.