What Are Advanced Materials - Definitions

Advanced materials ate vital to daily life in our world of high technology [1,2]. The notebook computer I am drafting this very sentence on illustrates the marvel of advanced materials engineering. It is smaller than a typical issue of the Journal of Chemical Physics and weighs less than five pounds yet it outperforms the very much bulkier personal computers used only a few years ago, let alone the old IBM electric typewriters. 

Advanced materials are the subject of the present monograph. The desired properties of modern and advanced materials are vastly superior to those which were available some 60 to 80 years ago [1]. The following examples serve to illustrate this point  

Advanced materials have, of course, many other beneficial properties. Importantly, new advanced materials with unique properties are continuously being developed for novel, and as yet unknown, applications. 

Smart and adaptive or intelligent materials adjust their mechanical properties upon the receipt of an external stimulus. In engineering language, they act as integrated sensors, processors, and actuators. For example, some polymers can be considered to be smart since they change their shapes with a change of temperature [3] this property has been exploited in the development of all- 

Nanosized materials or nanostructures have dimensions, as their name implies, in the 1-100 nanometer range [5, 6]. It is in this size region that the interaction between biology, chemistry, and physics is the most synergistic. Consequently, it is also an area which may yield truly advanced materials. 

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