A Material World

Exploring the Material World

Since the dawn of civilization, materials have been central to our growth prosperity, security, and quality of life. Nevertheless materials research as an intellectual activity is less than 50 years old.

The field of materials research is defined by the strong interrelationships among materials' properties, structure and composition, synthesis and processing, and performance. In developing new materials, discover and application, and therefore science and engineering, are closely interrelated.

Materials researchers investigate the structure and composition of materials on scales ranging from the electronic and atomic through the microscopic to the macroscopic. They develop new materials, improve established materials, and create methods to produce materials reliably and economically. Researchers seek to understand phenomena and to measure materials properties of all kinds. They also evaluate and manipulate the performance of materials as structural or functional elements in engineering systems. This diversity of interests is reflected in the manifoldness of materials researchers, who represent a broad range of academic disciplines, from physicists and chemists to mechanical engineers.

The Department of Materials at ETH Zurich undertakes key research that forms the scientific basis for new materials with improved properties. The material scientists and engineers at our Department work at the forefront of several areas of material science and engineering. They seek after new levels of understanding and control of the basic building blocks of materials: atoms, molecules, crystals, and noncrystalline arrays, as well as the controlled manipulation of material defects.

Without new materials many of the things that we take for granted at the dawn of the 21st century - telecommunications, sophisticated medicine, modern cars, trains and airplanes, and computers – could not exist. Today's research, however, will be the basis for new materials advances that will improve our lives for generations to come.