This article addresses two issues on thermodynamics, namely, the calculation of solubility lines and the calculation of the activity of various components. It discusses alloying elements in terms of their influence on the activity of carbon. The article describes the desulfurization and deoxidation of cast iron and steel. It illustrates the thermodynamics of the iron-carbon system and the iron-silicon system. The article examines solubility and saturation degrees of carbon in multicomponent iron-carbon systems. One of the main applications of the thermodynamics of the iron-carbon system is the calculation of structure-composition correlations. The article concludes with information on the structural diagrams, such as Maurer diagram and Laplanche diagram, for cast iron.

This article begins with an overview of the fundamentals of adhesive technology, including functions, limitations, adhesive joint types, and the key factors in the selection of adhesives, including application, type of joint, process limitation, mechanical requirement, and service conditions. It then focuses on the characteristics, types, and properties of the five groups of adhesives, such as structural, hot melt, pressure sensitive, water based, ultraviolet, and electron beam cured adhesives. The article also discusses the functions and applications of adhesive modifiers, including fillers, adhesion promoters, tackifiers, and tougheners. It gives a short note on functions of primers and primerless bonding. Applications of adhesives in automotive, aerospace, electronics, electrical, medical, sports, and construction sectors are also described. Finally, the article describes the steps in adhesive bonding, including storage and handling of adhesives, bonding preparation, adhesive application, tooling, and curing.

This article reviews the corrosion behavior of intermetallics for the modeling of the corrosion processes and for devising a strategy to create corrosion protective systems through alloy and coating design. It discusses the high-temperature corrosion properties of intermetallics and aqueous corrosion properties. Thermodynamic principles in the context of high-temperature corrosion and information on oxidation; sulfidation; hot corrosion of NiAl-, FeAl-, and TiAl-based intermetallics; and silicides are included. The article explores the thermodynamic consideration, ordering influencing kinetics, stress-cracking corrosion, and hydrogen embrittlement of aqueous corrosion. It also explains the practical issues dealing with the corrosion problems.

This article describes eight stages of the atomistic film growth: vaporization of the material, transport of the material to the substrate, condensation and nucleation of the atoms, nuclei growth, interface formation, film growth, changes in structure during the deposition, and postdeposition changes. It also discusses the effects and causes of growth-related properties of films deposited by physical vapor deposition processes, including residual film stress, density, and adhesion.

This article summarizes a physical model of an interface structure and shows how the model helps in optimizing atomistic modeling studies. It presents the orientation relationship of the interface structure to define the mutual crystallographic position of adjacent crystals. The article describes the model-informed atomistic modeling of the interface structures for interpolating the results of atomistic modeling to predict the properties of interfaces. Theories to predict low-energy orientation relationships are described. The article discusses the use of the localization parameter, such as shear modulus, bonding energy, and transformations, for prediction of interface structures. It provides information on the application of the atomistic modeling of interface structure to predict interface reaction mechanisms.

Many applications of ceramics and glasses require them to be joined to each other or to other materials such as metals. This article focuses on ceramic joining technologies, including glass-metal sealing, glass-ceramic/metal joining, ceramic-metal joining, ceramic-ceramic joining, and the more advanced joining of nonoxide ceramics. It also discusses metallizing, brazing, diffusion bonding, and chemical bonding.

Aluminum and its alloys are characterized by their low hardness and less satisfactory tribological performance. These limits can be overcome by means of load-specific surface engineering. This article provides information on the structure and properties of nitrided layers, and the technologies and mechanisms used for nitriding aluminum and its alloys. It also describes the nitriding behavior of aluminum alloys. The article concludes by describing how a combination of technologies can be utilized to achieve aluminum nitride with the highest tribological properties.

Electroless, or autocatalytic, metal plating is a nonelectrolytic method of deposition from solution that can be plated uniformly over all surfaces, regardless of size and shape. The plating's ability to plate onto nonconductors is an advantage that contributes to the choice of electroless copper in various applications. This article provides information on the bath chemistry and deposit properties of electroless copper and discusses the applications of electroless copper plating, such as printed wiring boards, decorative plating-on-plastic, electromagnetic interference shielding, and hybrid and other advanced applications. It describes two commercial processes, pretreatment and post-treatment. The article reviews the solutions used, controls and control equipment, and performance criteria of electroless copper plating. It concludes with information on the environmental and safety issues associated with electroless copper plating.

This article discusses the solidification of matrix alloy in cast metal matrix composites (MMCs). It begins with a discussion on the mixing techniques in reinforcement incorporation and wettability of reinforcement. It describes the solidification processes, such as stir mixing and melt infiltration, used in the synthesis of MMCs. The article also discusses the fundamentals of solidification process and presents a computational modeling of particle/solidification front interactions in metal-ceramic systems. The article concludes with information on nanocomposites.

This article focuses on transport phenomena and modeling approaches that are specific to vapor-phase processes (VPP). It discusses the VPP for the synthesis of materials. The article reviews the basic notions of molecular collisions and gas flows, and presents transport equations. It describes the modeling of vapor-surface interactions and kinetics of hetereogeneous processes as well as the modeling and kinetics of homogenous reactions in chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The article provides information on the various stages of developing models for numerical simulation of the transport phenomena in continuous media and transition regime flows of VPP. It explains the methods used for molecular modeling in computational materials science. The article also presents examples that illustrate multiscale simulations of CVD or PVD processes and examples that focus on sputtering deposition and reactive or ion beam etching.

This article discusses the properties, chemical structures, and applications of different types of elastomers grouped based on their resistance to aging (oxidative degradation), solvents, and temperature. These include butadiene rubber, natural rubber, isoprene rubber, chloroprene rubber, styrene-butadiene rubber, aerylonitrile-butadiene (nitrile) rubber, isobutylene-isoprene (butyl) rubber, ethylene-propylene (-diene) rubber, and silicone rubber. The article also provides an outline of the concerns related to the processing stages of rubbers or elastomers, including mixing or compounding, shaping, and vulcanizing or crosslinking.

This article presents the principles of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with illustrations. It discusses the types of CVD processes, namely, thermal CVD, plasma CVD, laser CVD, closed-reactor CVD, chemical vapor infiltration, and metal-organic CVD. The article reviews the CVD reactions of materials related to hard, tribological, and high-temperature coatings and to free-standing structures. It concludes by reviewing the advantages, disadvantages, and applications of CVD.

This article presents information regarding the use of protective coatings in municipal potable water systems, including raw water collection and transmission, water treatment plants, and treated water distribution. It provides useful guidance for the selection and use of protective coatings in these municipal water systems. The most commonplace corrosion-damage mechanisms are highlighted. The article describes the most common materials of construction found in municipal water systems, namely, cast iron, ductile iron, carbon steel, precast concrete cylinder pipe and reinforced concrete pipe, prestressed concrete tanks, and stainless steel. It provides information on the most common generic coating systems used for new steel tanks and water storage tanks. It concludes with a discussion of quality watch-outs when selecting or using protective coatings in municipal water systems.

High-temperature corrosion can occur in numerous environments and is affected by various parameters such as temperature, alloy and protective coating compositions, stress, time, and gas composition. This article discusses the primary mechanisms of high-temperature corrosion, namely oxidation, carburization, metal dusting, nitridation, carbonitridation, sulfidation, and chloridation. Several other potential degradation processes, namely hot corrosion, hydrogen interactions, molten salts, aging, molten sand, erosion-corrosion, and environmental cracking, are discussed under boiler tube failures, molten salts for energy storage, and degradation and failures in gas turbines. The article describes the effects of environment on aero gas turbine engines and provides an overview of aging, diffusion, and interdiffusion phenomena. It also discusses the processes involved in high-temperature coatings that improve performance of superalloy.

Ceramic materials serve important insulative, capacitive, conductive, resistive, sensor, electrooptic, and magnetic functions in a wide variety of electrical and electronic circuitry. This article focuses on various applications of advanced ceramics in both electric power and electronics industry, namely, dielectric, piezoelectric, ferroelectric, sensing, magnetic and superconducting devices.

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) can be synthesized by vapor phase, liquid phase, or solid phase processes. This article emphasizes the liquid-phase processing where solid reinforcements are incorporated in the molten metal or alloy melt that is allowed to solidify to form a composite. It illustrates the three broad categories of MMCs depending on the aspect ratio of the reinforcing phase. The categories include continuous fiber-reinforced composites, discontinuous or short fiber-reinforced composites, and particle-reinforced composites. The article discusses the two main classes of solidification processing of composites, namely, stir casting and melt infiltration. It describes the effects of reinforcement present in the liquid alloy on solidification. The article examines the automotive, space, and electronic packaging applications of MMCs. It concludes with information on development of select cast MMCs.

This article provides an overview of the fundamentals of tribology. It describes the advantages, disadvantages, and applications of pin-on-disk method, which is the most commonly used configuration for testing biomaterials and for the reproducible measurement of friction and wear. The article illustrates practical tribocorrosion setup that allows the user to perform wear tests in corrosive environments under well-defined electrochemical conditions and at controlled temperature. It describes the effect of changes in electrical contact resistance on tribological mode. The article discusses various in vivo environmental conditions in tribological tests. Some typical examples of biomaterials testing are also provided.

This article examines the high-temperature oxidation of silica-forming ceramics under constant temperature and cyclic conditions. The effects of water vapor, impurities, and molten salts are discussed. The article describes the oxidation and corrosion of silica-forming composites, oxide ceramics, non-silica forming nitrides, carbides, and borides. The performance of environmental barrier coatings by material type is also discussed. The article also explains the effects of oxidation and corrosion on the mechanical properties of ceramic-matrix composites. It concludes with information on high-temperature applications, wear properties, and the microscopic analyses of advanced ceramics.

This article lists functions of lubricants common to the majority of applications and processes. It discusses the lubricant candidates widely used in forging: conversion coatings with soaps (stearate compounds) and molybdenum disulfide for cold forging; oil-based thick, film oil or polymerbased lubricants and molybdenum disulfide for warm application; graphite suspensions in oil or water for hot forging steels; and glass films for titanium and superalloys hot forgings. The article describes the applications of lubricants in warm extrusion and forging, hot forging of steel, hot forging of aluminum, isothermal and hot die forging, and the extrusion of steel.