Based in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, advanced materials
research within the engineering school is a multidisciplinary activity that reaches
into chemical engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and electrical
engineering. Researchers within this discipline seek to model, characterize, sense,
and empirically study the behavior of metals, ceramics, polymers (plastics), and
semiconducting materials.
The engineering school has been awarded a $5 million
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) by the National Science
Foundation. This center expands upon the schools strengths in electronic materials,
nanopatterning, and the vapor deposition of materials, and, over the next five
years, its faculty will study the self-assembly of atoms onto semiconducting surfaces,
contributing to important new advances in microelectronics, biological science,
and telecommunications.
Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical
Engineering contain a set of outstanding materials characterization facilities.
These include an atomic force microscope, a focused ion beam system, and multiple
state-of-the-art transmission and scanning electron microscope system. These facilities
provide University faculty with the ability to probe materials at the most sophisticated
level available today.
The Intelligent Processing of Materials Laboratory
within Materials Science and Engineering has just completed installation of a
multimillion-dollar, second-generation directed vapor deposition system. This
technology, patented by the University of Virginia, provides the engineering school
with an unparalleled ability to synthesize multicomponent metal, ceramic, and
semiconducting materials for fields as wide ranging as medicine, transportation,
and microelectronics.
The Center for Electrochemical Science and Engineering
is built on the foundation of the Applied Electrochemistry Laboratories, a highly
successful research unit established in 1974. In 1986, the Virginia Center for
Innovative Technology identified the center as a Technology Development Center.
CESE is a multidisciplinary research effort that includes activities in the Departments
of Materials Science and Engineering as well as Chemical Engineering, in addition
to interactions with the Departments of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science,
and Physics.
