Materials Science and Engineering Chemistry

We are surrounded by matter. Materials make up our world. Our experiences, including our very first human experiences involve interaction with matter. At a very basic level, all of engineering involves understanding and manipulating matter at all possible scales, and achieving complex functionalities. Modern physical and chemical principles and tools provide us with the abilities to probe and manipulate matter at length and time scales which were hitherto unreachable. The extraordinary "dialogue" between the traditions of physical, chemical, biological, and engineering sciences within the discipline, makes materials science a very fertile interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary ground.

Materials science is a very empowering discipline. Why do I say so? Because, we deal with properties of materials. Materials scientists think about engineering properties of materials with the eventual goal of putting the material in good use. The subject is enormously empowering because once you get a "hang" of its basic principles, you are capable of having an intelligent conversation with almost any kind of scientist or technologist. This is so because scientists of all categories are dealing with the material world. They are interested studying it, manipulating it, and doing clever things using the matter that they lay their hands on.

The human civilization, and its trajectory is very often determined by its handle on materials technology. It is no surprise that human history is divided on the basis of the most important engineering material that was used in that specific era. This is why the "epochs" of our history are called stone age, iron age, bronze age etc. Some people think, the current era must be called silicon or information age. The science and engineering we do fall within that long tradition of materials science, wherein there is a serious quest for defining directions for the upcoming future. 

I think it is reasonable to argue that the science of materials existed for as long as human beings existed. Of course, strictly speaking, I am not using the word science as it is used in its modern context. But I am using the word "science" in its original sense, which means "knowledge" (Science derives from the Latin word "Scientia" which means knowledge). My point is that human beings have the innate curiosity to ask questions regarding the world around us, and almost all questions we ask about the physical universe involves materials! No wonder materials science is so interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. 

More formally, material science is often defined as the science of engineering materials. The fundamental goal of a materials scientist is to use insights from physics and chemistry to design a material of engineering relevance. Given that much of the atomistic understanding of materials is a fairly recent phenomena, it is no wonder that the tradition of materials science (as is formally defined) is fairly young, when compared to the more classical disciplines (such as physics, chemistry and mathematics). Hence despite the fact that people have been thinking about materials for several millenia, its modern trends are really a few decades old at best. This makes pedagogy within materials science education a particular challenge. I am often confounded by this issue; but have discovered that that engineering chemistry can serve as a nice bridge between fundamental physics and engineering, which in turn can aid lots of materials research. This is how I have chosen to pursue materials science. However, by no means is it the only way to do materials science. There are almost as many different pedagogies and research methodologies as there are materials scientists. 

In this website, you will see the various activities we do. You will notice a common pattern: we are driven by an engineering goals. It is the engineering goal that lays out the materials requirements for us. We then set out to design the material using ideas from chemistry and physics. Synthetic chemistry is our best friend. In particular most of the synthesis we do is based on insights from soft chemistry, and solid state chemistry. In some cases, we run the last mile by using the material for making a device, or a practical reactor of some sort. 

There is an emerging side to the science of materials, which is worth addressing here. Materials scientists have so far demonstrated remarkable ingenuity to come up with new materials, and in some cases modify an already existing material for a variety of applications. The environmental impact of their activities has been a thing that was placed on the "back burner" for way too long. Energy is the basic currency of any civilization, and the most handy source of energy today are the fossil fuels. We have reached a point wherein materials scientists must carefully deliberate about their collective practice, and its environmental impact. We must minimize our carbon footprint, and if possible remedy the extrordinary damage human industry has inflicted on Mother Nature. This is a demand that cannot be ignored any more. We take this need to minimize carbon footprint and overall environmental damage very seriously in our lab. This is why we most often do materials science using "green chemical" methods. You will see some of these practical themes consistently recurring in our projects.