Abstract:
Present day leisure and basic needs of our daily life has triggered an exponential increase in technical advances. This has enforced scientists and engineers to discover
new compounds and develop technologies. At present, this is reflected in all technologies involving metals, ceramics, semiconductors, polymers, composites, biomaterials
and other exotic materials. Not only these have commercial value but are also of fundamental interest. In last century, there have been several breakthrough inventions such
as superconductivity, metal-oxide-silicon (MOS) transistors, optical storage materials,
giant magnetoresistance, semiconductor lasers, optical fibers, liquid crystals, nanomaterials etc. These discoveries have greatly influenced the advances in medical science,
telecommunications, storage devices and other branches of science. Miniaturization is
another objective for integration and higher performance of present day’s devices.
Multifunctional materials provide a way to combine various functionalities in a single compound. Such advanced materials with coexisting superior properties can be
good candidates for application in various fields mentioned above. Progress in materials design, instruments and microscopic understanding has further helped to discover
these exotic phenomenon. Superconductivity which was discovered 100 years ago, is
still being widely studied to find materials with zero electrical resistance at room temperature.
