Materials Science and Chemistry

Materials Science and Chemistry

Nanostructures deal with objects and structures that are in the 1—100 nm range.  In many materials, atoms or molecules cluster together to form objects at the nanoscale. This leads to interesting electromagnetic, optical and mechanical properties. The term 'nanostructure' is often used when referring to magnetic technology and also applied in case of advanced materials. Microstructure is defined as the structure of a prepared surface or thin foil of material as revealed by a microscope above 25× magnification. It deals with objects from 100 nm to a few cm. Most of the traditional materials (such as metals and ceramics) are micro structured. Macrostructure is the appearance of a material in the scale millimeters to meters—it is the structure of the material as seen with the naked eye. Atomic structure deals with the atoms of the materials and how they are arranged to give structure of molecules, crystalline solids, their characterization, instrumentation etc., and the length scales involved are in angstroms (0.1 nm). The way in which the atoms and molecules are bonded and arranged is fundamental to studying the properties and behavior of any material. Crystallography is the science that examines the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is very much useful for materials scientists. Polymers display varying degrees of crystallinity and many are completely non-crystalline. Glass, some ceramics, and many natural and inorganic materials are amorphous, not possessing any long-range order in their atomic nuclei. Allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure are termed as Carbon nanotubes (CNTs). These carbon molecules have unusual properties, which are valuable for nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science and technology.