Tool for materials science

The density weighted images and their absolute quantification demonstrated through concrete drying experiments are very powerful tools for material science. 

Ressler, T. 1998. WinXAS A program for x-ray absorption spectroscopy as an in-situ tool in materials science. J. Synchrotron Rad. 5 118-22. 

The microsystems may also serve potential applications in material science and in the growing field of nanotechnology. Microhotplates can be used for material processing, and, at the same time, for the monitoring of material properties such as the electrical resistance [10]. Moreover, the microsystems can be applied to determine thermal properties of new materials such as the melting point, especially when only small quantities of material are available [145], so that monolithic microhotplate-based devices are not only powerful sensor systems for a broad range of applications, but also new research tools for sensor science and nanotechnology. 

Due to its unique ability to directly image the local structure of a thin object with atomic resolution, HRTEM is an extremely powerful tool for materials research. Metals, ceramics, and semiconductors are some examples of prominent materials of interest. HRTEM imaging used to be a high-end research tool mostly used in academia, but has now become standard for a wide variety of applications from materials science research to defect analysis in industrial semiconductor fabrication lines. 

Photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) has become an important and widely used tool in material science (1-3). It has been a particularly fruitful technique for the investigation of polymers (4-9). In this review, we will focus on the application of photoelectron spectroscopy to the investigation of the interfaces between metals and polymers. These studies are directed primarily to understand the role of Interfacial chemistry in the adhesion between metals and polymers. Two aspects, which will be emphasized here, are the experimental approaches in PES studies of polymer/metal interfaces and the types of information accessible from the PES experiments. The experimental emphasis will be on preparation of appropriate samples for polymer/metal interface studies, practical problems... 

NMR is an important experimental tool for polymer science and is used to study molecular structure and dynamics. The technique is a key method in the design of new polymers and can be used to identify atoms present, functional groups, and their configurations. NMR is also useful for measuring the average molar mass of a material, molecular tumbling correlation times, and other localized dynamics. 

In general, this reflects the faa that the ever increasing complexity of polymer systems listed in a recent Perspeaive Article on "challenges and opportunities of research in maaomolecular science" requires more and more advanced techniques of characterization. Unfortunately, not all of them could be adequately covered in this volume. For example, the use of focused ion beams, which is a powerful commercial tool for miao- and nanostmcturing as well as an analytical tool for materials research and in the semiconductor industry, could not be covered. When combined with electron microscopy, it... 

Microscopes are also used as analytical tools for strain analysis in materials science, detenuination of refractive indices and for monitoring biological processes in vivo on a microscopic scale etc. In this case resolution is not necessarily the only important issue rather it is the sensitivity allowing the physical quantity under investigation to be accurately detennined. 

Schoenlein R W, Leeman W P, Chin A H, Volfbein P, Glover T E, Balling P, Zolotorev M, Kim K-J, Chattopadhayay S and Shank C V 1996 Femtosecond x-ray pulses at 0.4 A generated by 90° Thomson scattering a tool for probing the structural dynamics of materials Science 274 236-8... 

Molecular dynamics simulation, which provides the methodology for detailed microscopical modeling on the atomic scale, is a powerful and widely used tool in chemistry, physics, and materials science. This technique is a scheme for the study of the natural time evolution of the system that allows prediction of the static and dynamic properties of substances directly from the underlying interactions between the molecules. 

MEIS has proven to be a powerful and intuitive tool for the study of the composition and geometrical structure of surfaces and interfaces several layers below a surface. The fact that the technique is truly quantitative is all but unique in surface science. The use of very high resolution depth profiling, made possible by the high-resolution energy detectors in MEIS, will find increased applicability in many areas of materials science. With continued technical development, resulting in less costly instrumentation, the technique should become of even wider importance in the years to come. 

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