Page 22 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

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1.3. Design of New Materials Through a “Critical Thinking” Approach

Although there are many possibilities for such development, the following are
essential components of any new development:
(i) Define the societal need, and what type of material is being sought. That is,
determine the desired properties of the new material.
(ii) Perform a comprehensive literature survey to determine what materials are
currently being used. This must be done in order for the new product to
successfully compete in the consumer/industrial market. It is essential to
search both scientific (e.g., http://www.pubs.acs.org – for all journals published
by the American Chemical Society) and patent literature (e.g., http://www.
delphion.com), so that extensive research efforts are not wasted by reinventing
something that already exists.
(iii) It should be noted that any exercise in critical thinking will result in more
questions than originally anticipated. This is illustrated in the flowchart above,
where one will look for interesting products/reactions, and begin to think about
the mechanism of the process. Such a “first-principle” understanding of the
process is essential in order to increase yields of the material, and scale-up the
technology for industrial applications.
(iv) After the new technology is protected by filing patents, publication in scientific
literature is also important to foster continual investigations and new/

improved materials. Top journals such as Nature, Science, The Journal of
the American Chemical Society, The Chemistry of Materials, Advanced Mate-
rials, Nano Letters, and Small publish articles every week related to new
developments in the most active areas of science. In recent years, the number
of materials-related papers has increased exponentially. The continual com-
pounding of knowledge fosters further development related to the synthesis,
characterization, and modeling of materials. However, this may only take
place as active researchers share their results with their worldwide colleagues.
The objective of Materials Chemistry is to provide an overview of the various
types of materials, with a focus on synthetic methodologies and relationships
between the structure of a material and its overall properties. Each chapter will
feature a section entitled “Important Materials Applications” that will describe an
interesting current/future application related to a particular class of material. Topics
for these sections include fuel cells, limb implants, solar cells, “self-healing”
plastics, and molecular machines (e.g., artificial muscles).
The classes of materials listed below will be covered in this edition, with a
thorough description of how their atomic and molecular subunit architectures affect
properties and applications. Without such an appreciation of these relationships, we
will not be able to effectively design new and improved materials that are required to
further improve our way of life.
• Metals
• Semiconductors
• Superconductors
• Glasses and ceramics
• Magnetic materials