Developing and manufacturing effective, safe, reliable new drugs or critical new materials for use in semiconductors or applications involving dangerous materials requires many layers of knowledge.

The pattern of arrangement of atoms in a crystal, called the crystal lattice, can have a huge effect on the properties of solid materials. Controlling and harnessing these properties is a challenge ...

To strengthen alloys, metallurgists often tweak the size and orientation of microscopic crystal grains within the material. Now researchers have applied the same principles at a much larger scale to ...

Metalworkers and metallurgists have long appreciated the ability to tailor the performance characteristics of steel (an alloy of iron and carbon), including their strength, hardness, ductility and ...