Abstract:
Our quality of life is increasingly dependent on the advances in technology,
which is in turn often furthered (impeded) by the (lack of) advances in materials.
During and immediately following the industrial revolution in the
nineteenth century, the advances in construction and transportation were
driven by the advances in procurement and production of metals and alloys.
Similarly, the post Second World War era saw unprecedented advances
in polymers, ceramics, superalloys, and semiconductors. The information
age [1] of today is driven by speed and size. Coupled with increasing energy
demands, astronomical amounts of data handling, rapid progress in the
field of medicine and health care, today’s materials research correspondingly
focuses on efficient methods of energy storage [2], alternative fuels [3], increasing
capacities of data storage and retrieval [4], effective vaccines with
accurate drug delivery systems [5], and so on.
