Physical Sciences & Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering Research
Materials science and engineering studies how the processing, structure and properties of materials relate to their performance, across metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, electronic and biological materials. The research-practice view is organised less by material class than by shared infrastructure: funding programmes, measurement facilities, structure and property databases, standards and a small set of learned societies.
In the United States, the National Science Foundation funds materials research through programmes in Biomaterials, Ceramics, Condensed Matter and Materials Theory, Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic and Photonic Materials, Metals and Metallic Nanostructures, Polymers, and Solid State and Materials Chemistry, plus the cross-cutting DMREF programme. DMREF is NSF's main response to the Materials Genome Initiative, which the National Science and Technology Council launched in 2011 to design, manufacture and deploy materials faster and more cheaply. The Department of Energy's Basic Energy Sciences programme organises its materials portfolio into Materials Discovery, Design and Synthesis, Scattering and Instrumentation Sciences, and Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, and it supports the light sources, neutron sources, electron beam centers and Nanoscale Science Research Centers on which much of the field depends.
Data practice is now part of the work. Open repositories such as the Materials Project, NOMAD and the Materials Data Facility hold computed and experimental data, and the Crystallography Open Database and the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database hold crystal structures. Measurement quality rests on ASTM standards and NIST Standard Reference Materials. Results appear in society journals from the Materials Research Society, TMS, the American Ceramic Society and ASM International, in Acta Materialia, Nature Materials and Advanced Materials, and as preprints in the arXiv cond-mat.mtrl-sci class. The specialization hubs cover alloys, ceramics, polymers, composites, biomaterials, electronic materials, nanomaterials, computation, characterization, additive manufacturing and reliability.
New to the field? What is Materials Science & Engineering? →
Reviewed 5 November 2026 by CASRAI Editorial Board
- Materials Genome Initiative(read 5 November 2026)
- NSF MPS materials research(read 5 November 2026)
- NSF DMREF(read 5 November 2026)
- NSF MRSEC solicitation(read 5 November 2026)
- DOE BES Materials Sciences and Engineering(read 5 November 2026)
- DOE BES Scientific User Facilities(read 5 November 2026)
- NIST Material Measurement Laboratory(read 5 November 2026)
- NIST Materials Genome Initiative(read 5 November 2026)
- Materials Genome Initiative (Wikipedia)(read 5 November 2026)
- arXiv condensed matter archive(read 5 November 2026)
Field at a glance
Journals
- Nature Materials
- Nature Portfolio journal, first issue September 2002, covering materials science and engineering from synthesis and processing to structure, across metals, polymers, photonics and nanoscale materials.Website ↗
- Acta Materialia
- Elsevier journal on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc., founded 1953 as Acta Metallurgica; original papers and commissioned Overviews on all aspects of materials science.Website ↗
- Advanced Materials
- Weekly Wiley-VCH journal begun in 1988 as a supplement to Angewandte Chemie, covering chemistry, physics, nanotechnology, ceramics, metallurgy and biomaterials.Website ↗
Societies
- Materials Research Society (MRS)
- Founded 1973; publishes MRS Bulletin, Journal of Materials Research, MRS Communications, MRS Energy & Sustainability and MRS Advances, and holds spring and fall meetings.Website ↗
- TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society)
- Founded 1957 within AIME; publishes JOM, Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A and B, Journal of Electronic Materials and Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation.Website ↗
- The American Ceramic Society
- Founded 1898; publishes Journal of the American Ceramic Society and three other peer-reviewed journals on applied ceramics, glass and ceramic engineering.Website ↗
- ASM International
- Began in 1913 as the Steel Treaters Club; publishes journals, books and databases and oversees affiliate societies such as the Heat Treating Society and Failure Analysis Society.Website ↗
Funders and programmes
- NSF materials research programmes
- Programmes include Biomaterials, Ceramics, Electronic and Photonic Materials, Metals and Metallic Nanostructures, Polymers and Solid State and Materials Chemistry, plus MRSEC centers.Website ↗
- NSF DMREF
- Funds closed-loop teams combining experiment, computation, theory and data; awards of 1.5 to 2 million dollars over four years, competed every two years.Website ↗
- DOE Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering
- Fundamental materials research in three teams: discovery, design and synthesis; scattering and instrumentation; condensed matter and materials physics.Website ↗
- Materials Genome Initiative (MGI)
- Multi-agency federal initiative; its 2021 strategic plan targets a unified Materials Innovation Infrastructure, materials data and workforce training.Website ↗ · Our guide →
Archives, facilities and data
- Materials Project
- Open-access database run by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, launched 2011, with density functional theory properties for over 130,000 inorganic compounds.Website ↗
- NOMAD
- Free open-source platform operated by the FAIRmat consortium; its site reports about 19.4 million entries and parses more than 60 file formats.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- Materials Data Facility
- Discover, publish and cite materials datasets with DOIs; supported by NIST and the CHiMaD center, with publishing built on Globus.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- Crystallography Open Database (COD)
- Fully open-access crystal structure database in CIF format, with more than 520,000 entries as of November 2024.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD)
- Founded 1978; produced by FIZ Karlsruhe and NIST, with over 318,000 entries as of August 2025, updated twice a year.Website ↗
- DOE BES scientific user facilities
- Synchrotron light sources, neutron sources, electron beam centers and five Nanoscale Science Research Centers open to outside researchers.Website ↗
Standards and formats
- ASTM International
- Voluntary consensus standards for materials, products and systems from more than 140 technical committees; standards bind only when a contract or regulation cites them.Website ↗
- NIST Standard Reference Materials
- More than 1,200 certified reference materials with known composition or properties, used to verify measurements; sold through the NIST Store.Website ↗
Preprints and indexes
- arXiv cond-mat.mtrl-sci
- The Materials Science subject class of arXiv's Condensed Matter archive, alongside cond-mat.soft and cond-mat.mes-hall.Website ↗
36 pages across 9 topic areas
Laboratory Operations & Safety
- ASTM E1417: Liquid Penetrant Testing Practice Explained
ASTM E1417 covers minimum requirements for liquid penetrant testing of nonporous components; a cross-walk of E1417, E165, AMS 2644 and the written pro…
- Atomic Force Microscopy: Contact, Tapping and Non-Contact Modes Compared
A direct comparison of AFM contact, tapping and non-contact imaging modes — tip force, sample damage risk, suitable specimens and resolution — plus a…
- Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES): How It Works and What It Measures
How Auger electron spectroscopy generates a surface-elemental signal, why it samples only the top few nanometers, how it compares to XPS, and how rese…
- Dynamic Light Scattering: Z-Average, PDI and How to Read a DLS Report
What Z-average and PDI actually mean, a PDI band table for reading sample quality, and a worked walkthrough of why intensity, volume and number distri…
- Magnetic Materials: Types, Specs and Lab Testing
A practitioner guide to magnetic materials: IEC 60404-1 classification, soft vs hard specs, VSM calibration via NIST SRM 772a, and lab safety protocol…
- Metal Injection Moulding: Process & Standards
Technical guide to metal injection moulding: feedstock compounding, debinding methods, sintering shrinkage, and ISO 22068 and ASTM B883 material stand…
- Powder Diffraction File (PDF): ICDD's Reference Database for XRD Phase Identification
The Powder Diffraction File (PDF) is the ICDD's curated reference database of powder X-ray diffraction patterns used to identify crystalline phases by…
- Powder Metallurgy: Process, Methods and Standards
A technical guide to powder metallurgy: the press-and-sinter sequence, ASTM and ISO standards, MPIF material grades, and lab powder characterization.…
- SEM vs TEM: Which Electron Microscope for Which Sample
SEM and TEM answer different questions: SEM images surface topography on bulk samples, TEM images internal ultrastructure on sub-100nm sections at nea…
- Size Exclusion Chromatography: Column Selection, Calibration and Molecular Weight Determination
How to calculate Kav from V0, Ve and Vt, build a log(MW) calibration curve, and select an SEC column and resin — with a full worked example and a trou…
- Stress Corrosion Cracking: Mechanisms & Guide
Explore stress corrosion cracking (SCC): the mechanical and chemical triad, crack propagation mechanisms, ASTM testing standards, and prevention metho…
- Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA): Running a Scan and Interpreting Mass-Loss Steps
A practical guide to running a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) scan and interpreting the resulting curve: crucible and purge-gas selection, heating-r…
- Transmission Electron Microscopy: Sample Preparation Workflow and Resolution Limits
A numbered TEM sample preparation workflow (fixation through grid staining), specimen-thickness and resolution tables, alternative prep routes, and a…
Scholarly Publishing
- ASTM Compass: Standards Platform & Search Guide
ASTM Compass provides searchable access to 13,000+ ASTM standards, redline revision diffs, and historical specifications for materials science researc…
- Citrine Informatics: Materials Informatics Platform Explained
What Citrine Informatics is, what materials informatics means, how the platform is organised and which open alternatives exist.…
- Computational Materials Science Journal: Guide
A comprehensive guide to the Computational Materials Science journal, covering multiscale modeling scopes, submission workflows, metrics, and data pol…
- Granta EduPack: Materials Selection and Data
A complete guide to Granta EduPack: database levels, Ashby chart selection tools, Eco Audit life cycle analysis, and educational vs research licensing…
- Scripta Materialia: Journal Scope, Article Types and Submission
What Scripta Materialia publishes, how it differs from Acta Materialia, its article types, where to submit and how to read its metrics.…
Research Data Management
- Crystallography Open Database (COD): Open-Access Crystal Structure Repository
The Crystallography Open Database (COD) is a free, open-access repository of experimentally determined crystal structures in CIF format, with 520,000+…
- ICSD: Inorganic Crystal Structure Database Guide
A practical guide to the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), covering search strategies, curated record contents, licensing, and citation sta…
- Materials Genome Initiative (MGI): The US Push for FAIR Materials-Science Data
The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) is a US federal multi-agency effort, launched in 2011 and coordinated via NIST and the NSTC, to accelerate mater…
- NOMAD vs. Materials Data Facility: Choosing a Materials-Science RepositoryComparison
NOMAD and the Materials Data Facility (MDF) are the leading repositories for computational and experimental materials-science data. This comparison co…
Research Methods & Statistics
- Materials Science vs Chemistry: What Is the Difference?Comparison
Chemistry asks what substances are made of and how they transform; materials science asks how the structure of a material, set by its processing, dete…
- What Is Materials Science?
A thorough answer to "what is materials science": what it studies, the processing-structure-properties-performance framework, major subfields, charact…
- What Is Nanotechnology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
What nanotechnology studies, its research areas, who funds it (NSF, NIH, DOE, DoD), lab methods and equipment, and career and training paths.…
- What Is Polymer Science? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
Polymer science studies the synthesis, structure and properties of macromolecules. Research areas, methods, history, funding, societies and career pat…
Laboratory Compliance & Quality
- Calibration Certificates and Metrological Traceability: What "NIST-Traceable" Actually Means
What a compliant calibration certificate must contain, what metrological traceability (VIM) actually requires, why "NIST-traceable" is widely misused,…
- ISO/IEC 17025: What It Actually Accredits and How It Differs from ISO 9001
ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredits a laboratory’s technical competence for a defined scope of tests or calibrations — it does not certify the organization a…
- Nanomaterial Safety in the Research Laboratory
A practical guide to nanomaterial safety in the research lab: NIOSH RELs for TiO2 and carbon nanotubes, control banding when no OEL exists, and the re…
Laboratory Equipment & Instrumentation
- ATR-FTIR vs Transmission FTIR: Penetration Depth, Crystal Choice, and Spectral Distortion
A sampling-mode selection guide for mid-IR: the penetration-depth equation with its variables and assumptions, crystal choice by sample chemistry, and…
- Charpy Impact Test: Method, Machine and Results
The Charpy impact test breaks a notched specimen with a pendulum to measure absorbed energy. Method, CVN, machine verification and result interpretati…
- Sputtering: PVD Thin Film Deposition Principles and Practice
Learn sputtering deposition principles, DC vs RF excitation, vacuum parameters, target choices, and thin-film sample preparation for electron microsco…
Grants Management & Research Funding
- NSF DMR: Division of Materials Research Guide
A complete guide to the NSF Division of Materials Research (DMR): 8 core programs under NSF 26-521, no-deadline submissions, annual PI limits, and DMS…
- NSF DMREF: Program Guide & Proposal Strategy
NSF DMREF funds interdisciplinary teams accelerating materials discovery through iterative closed loops of theory, computation, and experimental valid…
Research Tools & Software
- What Is Overleaf? A Beginner's Guide to the Online LaTeX Editor
What Overleaf is, why researchers use it instead of Word for equation-heavy and citation-heavy manuscripts, getting started without knowing LaTeX, jou…
Scholarly Writing
- How to Cite ASTM Standards: APA, IEEE, Chicago
A reference guide on how to cite ASTM standards in APA 7th, IEEE, Chicago 18th, and MLA 9th, including reference templates, in-text formats, and examp…
