EDITORIAL
The Analytical Side of Materials Science Materials science encompasses organic and inorganic polymers, metallurgy, ceramics (including glasses and hightemperature superconductors), and the plethora of substances of and with which microelectronics devices are made. Materials science research lies closer to technological utilization than do many of the chemical sciences, and it forms an interface between chemistry and the engineering sciences. In academics, it arose principally within metallurgy groups in engineering schools, which hampered interdisciplinary education and research bet w e e n a c a d e m i c ch e m i s t s a n d materials scientists. Industry has done a far better job of integrating such efforts into "materials chemistry." The great dividends of materials chemistry research were outlined severa1 years ago in the National Academy of Sciences report, "Opportunities for Chemistry," which also emphasizes that many research challenges and opportunities remain. This 1985 report still makes intriguing reading for students and research scholars. The connections between analytical chemistry and materials science are as strong as any in chemistry. Consider a few examples of how the products of materials science are used in our discipline. Piezoelectric materials are the basis of sensitive microbalances, surface acoustic wave devices, and the important new atomic microscopy tool called scanning tunneling microscopy. Optical fibers and waveguides, developed by materials scientists for the communications industry, yield important formats for spectrophotometric analysis. Materials scientists have carried out research leading to solidstate lasers and to high-temperature
oxide-conducting ceramics used as oxygen sensors. Microlithographically based structures are used in analytical sensors called chemiresistors and chemfets. Carbon-fiber microelectrodes employed for in vivo voltammetry are byproducts of fiber-reinforced polymer structural composites. The intellectual flow has certainly not been one way; polymer research is enormously aided by the analytical tools of gel permeation chromatography and high-mass mass spectrometry, and materials research in general by the powerful array of surface analysis techniques such as photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry. Analytical chemists, however, have many more unrealized opportunities for contributions to, and utilization of, materials science and materials chemistry. For example, although our approaches to surface analysis grow more powerful daily, our capacity for measurements in bulk solid materials-whether crystalline, ceramic, grain boundary, or amorphouspolymeric-is primitive. We are not making full use of new synchrotron radiation sources to attack such problems. The phenomenon of adhesion is another example where in situ molecular-level probes of surface wetting and bonding chemistry are needed, as are better measures of solid-state and interfacial oxidation-reduction and photochemistry. Materials chemistry is an active frontier of chemical and analytical chemical knowledge, and it deserves our attention in classroom and research laboratories. .
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 63, NO. 9, MAY 1, 1991
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