Undergraduate Study
For an up to date listing of courses and further information (including a pdf of our brochure) on our materials science and engienering degree visit the Undergraduate Study pages of the School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering. For all undergraduate courses offered within the Faculty of Enginering visit www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/ug
Materials science, engineering and technologies are all around us. Advanced materials continue to revolutionise our lives by offering advanced performance and new possibilities of design and usage. Notable recent examples have been the advent of:
- high strength carbon composites (used in cars, aircraft and sports equipment),
- new electronic materials for digital communication (used in mobile phones, optical networks)
- "active functional materials" also known as SMART materials, can change their properties in a controllable way (for example ski's and snowboards that absorb vibrations, buildings that respond to weather conditions, miniature loudspeakers, noise reduction system in cars & planes).
Materials Science is the study of the properties, processing and applications of the materials of science and engineering.
It is a key enabling technology and, as a subject, it fundamentally underpins the present status and future developments of our high technology world. Without the advances made in the materials field, for which materials scientists have been responsible, few of the objects around us, which we now regard as commonplace, would have been possible and the late 20th century lifestyle would have been very different.
The core of the subject is founded on the interrelationships between processing, microstructure and properties. Very few materials properties are intrinsic - most are extrinsic, i.e. they depend not just on the composition of the material but on the processing history. This dependence comes about because of the material's microstructure. Very few commercial materials are homogeneous (the same all through); rather they contain structural inhomogeneities (differences) on a length scale of a few nanometres up to many millimetres. It is these inhomogeneities which materials scientists refer to as microstructure (See picture on left).
Because the length scales of these microstructural features coincide with the fundamental physical processes responsible for a material's properties (e.g. strength, electrical conductivity, magnetic behaviour, etc.) they have a profound effect on these properties.
Fortunately, in most cases, it is possible to exert a remarkable degree of control over the microstructure by the correct choice of processing route and thus a sound knowledge of materials science enables engineers to tailor the properties of a material to suit a particular application. Additionally, the processing-microstructure-property cycle is completed because a material's properties fundamentally influence the choice of processing route available for that material.
A study of the subject covers ceramics, metals and polymers (both 'traditional' and advanced) as well as composite materials. The range of programmes offered by the Institute for Materials Research enable students to gain a broad-based education in all aspects of materials or to focus on either metals or ceramics.