THE ROLE OF CHEMICAL METALLURGY IN THE EMERGING FIELD OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Materials science and engineering has been emerging as a unique academic discipline during the last decade and a half. The role of chemical metallurgy in this-emerging field is not well defined, yet it has played an important historical role in the intellectual development of the discipline of metallurgical engineering in terms of teaching, research, and technological applications. In this lecture, I have attempted to define the role of chemical metallurgy in this emerging field and, moreover, to propose using the broader term ''chemical processing of material'' instead of chemical metallurgy. The role is to educate materials scientists and engineers at the baccalaureate degree level as well as the graduate degree level. I believe that if materials scientists and engineers have a good grasp of the principles of chemical processing of materials, they will be in an excellent position to tackle many of the challenging and important problems facing us in the materials field. I have also given in this lecture three diverse examples of materials problems that have been studied using,the basic-principles of chemical processing of materials. These examples are used to demonstrate that the tools of chemical metallurgy can; be used effectively to study many contemporary materials science and engineering problems.