Subject engineering material

Catalysis spans chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science and biology. The goal here is to enliven the subject with diverse examples showing the microscopic details of catalysis. 

The solar production of hydrogen by water photoelectrolysis is an open field in which chemists, electrical engineers, material scientists, physicists, and others practice together. This book is intended as a modern text on the subject for an advanced (undergraduate and up) reader that leads, hopefully, to a point from which the current literature in much of the field can be read with a critical understanding and appreciation. Semiconductors are intrinsic to and hence implicit in water photoelectrolysis, yet the astute reader will have already noticed semiconductor is missing from the title we mean no disrespect to semiconductors, rather we prefer short and hopefully catchy titles. 

As noted, the water photoelectrolysis field is inherently interdisciplinary, variously attracting and mixing the work of chemists, electrical engineers, material scientists, and physicists. Each field has its own nuances of description, which makes a book such as this a mix of units, terminology, and symbols. We have done our best to concisely describe the subject matter in way a generic scientist, regardless of the discipline in which they hope to or have received their Ph.D., could understand. Certainly the successful researcher in the field must be able to appreciate and integrate concepts and principles that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. 

Figure 8.8 Element of the wall of a thin cylinder subjected to internal pressure P. Reprinted, by permission, from G. Lewis, Selection of Engineering Materials, p. 140. Copyright 1990 by Prentice-Hill, Inc.

It may first be restated for whom this book is intended. Its obvious home is in the chemistry and chemical engineering departments of universities. Electrochemistry is also often the basis of fields treated in departments of engineering, materials, science, and biology. However, the total sales of the first edition far exceeded the number of electrochemists in the Electrochemical Society—evidence that the book is used by scientists who may have backgrounds in quite other subjects, but find that their disciplines involve the properties of interfaces and thus, in practice, the interfacial part of electrochemistry (for the ionics part, see Vol. 1). 

This book is intended both for self study and as a graduate textbook. Each of the two parts can serve as the basis of a one-semester course. In Part one I have included the very minimum needed for developing a basic understanding of interfacial electrochemistry. In Part two some of the same subjects are dealt with in further detail and new subjects are introduced, to provide a broader appreciation of this area of science. It is recommended for scientists and engineers in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, corrosion, battery... 

This book should be of immense help to chemical engineers, materials managers, maintenance engineers and practitioners in rubber and students alike. Moreover this will be a reference book for workers in fertilisers, caustic soda and other chemical and process industries. The clear and primarily non-technical style of writing for a technical subject such as this, which the author intended as far as possible, will also attract general readers with a more limited knowledge of rubber. 

From the standpoint of the student in a plant design course, the preliminary selection of materials based on published literature references is about the only recourse he has to solving the problem. To assist in this selection, a Bibliography is listed in the Additional Selected References at the end of the book. The most complete handbook on the subject of materials is Mantell, Engineering Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1958. A suitable source... 

Hertzberg, R.W. (1989) Deformation and Fracture Mechanics of Engineering Materials. Wiley, New York. Hibino, Y. and Hanafusa, H. (1985) Raman study on silica optical fibers subjected to high tensile stress. Appl. Phys. Lett., 47 812-814. 

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