21
fibers, could be incorporated into thermosetting polyesters or
epoxies, giving them the stiffness and strength of aluminum alloys.
By the mid-1940s glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) components were in use in the aircraft industry. The real transformation
of polymers into high-performance structural materials came with
the development of aramid and carbon fibers in the 1960s. Incorporated as reinforcements, they give materials with performance
(meaning stiffness and strength per unit weight) that exceeded that
of all other bulk materials, earning their now-dominant position
in the creation of sports equipment and in aerospace.
The period in which we now live might have been named the Polymers and Composites Era had it not coincided with a second revolution: that of silicon technology. Silicon was first identified as an
element in 1823 but found few uses until the 1947 discovery that,
when doped with tiny levels of impurity, it could act as a transistor.
The discovery created the fields of electronics, mechatronics, and
modern computer science, revolutionizing information storage,
access, and transmission; imaging; sensing and actuation; numerical modeling; and much more. So we live in what is rightly called
the Information Age, enabled by the development of transistorgrade silicon.
The 20
th century saw other striking developments in materials technology. Superconduction, discovered in mercury and lead when
cooled to 4.2°K (–269°C) in 1911, found no applications outside
scientific research. But in the mid-1980s, two physicists at the IBM
research center in Zurich discovered a complex oxide containing
barium, lanthanum, and copper that was superconducting at 30°K.
This triggered a search for superconductors with yet higher transition temperatures, leading, in 1987, to a material with a transition
temperature above 98°K, the temperature of readily available liquid
nitrogen, making applications practical.
In the last two decades, the area of biomaterials has developed
rapidly. Implanting materials in or on the human body was not
practical until an aseptic surgical technique was discovered in the
late 1800s. In addition, when nontoxic metal alloys were introduced, they tended to fracture in service. It was not until the development of polymer-based systems and, subsequently, with a new
wave of discoveries in cell biology, chemistry, and materials science,
that synthetic biomaterials became a reality.
During the late 20
th century it was realized that the behavior of
materials depended on scale and that the dependence was most
evident when the scale was that of nanometers. Although the term
A Brief History of Materials
fibers, could be incorporated into thermosetting polyesters or
epoxies, giving them the stiffness and strength of aluminum alloys.
By the mid-1940s glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) components were in use in the aircraft industry. The real transformation
of polymers into high-performance structural materials came with
the development of aramid and carbon fibers in the 1960s. Incorporated as reinforcements, they give materials with performance
(meaning stiffness and strength per unit weight) that exceeded that
of all other bulk materials, earning their now-dominant position
in the creation of sports equipment and in aerospace.
The period in which we now live might have been named the Polymers and Composites Era had it not coincided with a second revolution: that of silicon technology. Silicon was first identified as an
element in 1823 but found few uses until the 1947 discovery that,
when doped with tiny levels of impurity, it could act as a transistor.
The discovery created the fields of electronics, mechatronics, and
modern computer science, revolutionizing information storage,
access, and transmission; imaging; sensing and actuation; numerical modeling; and much more. So we live in what is rightly called
the Information Age, enabled by the development of transistorgrade silicon.
The 20
th century saw other striking developments in materials technology. Superconduction, discovered in mercury and lead when
cooled to 4.2°K (–269°C) in 1911, found no applications outside
scientific research. But in the mid-1980s, two physicists at the IBM
research center in Zurich discovered a complex oxide containing
barium, lanthanum, and copper that was superconducting at 30°K.
This triggered a search for superconductors with yet higher transition temperatures, leading, in 1987, to a material with a transition
temperature above 98°K, the temperature of readily available liquid
nitrogen, making applications practical.
In the last two decades, the area of biomaterials has developed
rapidly. Implanting materials in or on the human body was not
practical until an aseptic surgical technique was discovered in the
late 1800s. In addition, when nontoxic metal alloys were introduced, they tended to fracture in service. It was not until the development of polymer-based systems and, subsequently, with a new
wave of discoveries in cell biology, chemistry, and materials science,
that synthetic biomaterials became a reality.
During the late 20
th century it was realized that the behavior of
materials depended on scale and that the dependence was most
evident when the scale was that of nanometers. Although the term
A Brief History of Materials