Springer Technology Guide Principles Applications Trends
discipline in its own right. Researchers had to seek out
materials from the standard range available on the
market and adapt them as far as possible for new pur-poses. Nowadays material scientists, chemists,
physicists and even biologists create their own tailor-made materials. Today´s knowledge of materials has
grown exponentially over the past three decades.
Around two thirds of all innovations depend on mate-rial-related aspects of development. In the western
technology-based countries more than 70 % of gross
national product derives directly or indirectly from the
development of new materials. The main contributors
are energy generation, the automotive industry, me-chanical engineering, the electrical and electronics in-dustry and chemical production.
Development times for new materials are long.
Progressing from the laboratory sample to a finished
product can take a decade. Once a new material has
been developed and tested, its properties, in particular
its amenability to quality-assured and cost-efficient
production, have to be verified. It also has to be borne
in mind that the way a material is produced can have
an influence on its structure and properties. Converse-ly, to achieve specific properties (e. g. hardness) specific
processing methods are required.
Over the past decade nanotechnology has been the
main driving force behind innovations in materials
science generated from basic research, even though it
is not an isolated discipline. The advance into these ti-niest dimensions has proved useful in improving the
resolution and understanding of material structures.
The techniques developed now go beyond observation
and facilitate specific processing. With small particle
structures, completely new properties can be generat-ed. It is now even possible to manipulate single atoms.
Lightweight materials dominate demand as far as
the market is concerned, since the need to improve en-ergy efficiency calls for materials that provide the same
properties but at lower weight. The transport sector is
the dominant player here.
The topics 7 . Around 80
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