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Imagine that a young physicist would approach a granting agen­ cy and propose to contribute to heterogeneous catalysis by studying the heat conductivity of gases in contact with a hot filament. How would he be received now? How would he have been treated sixty years ago? Yet, more than sixty years ago, Irving Langmuir, through his study of heat transfer from a tungsten filament, uncovered most of the fundamental ideas which are used to-day by the scientific com­ munity in pure and applied heterogeneous catalysis. Through his work with what were for the first time'clean'metal surfaces, Langmuir formulated during a period of a little over ten years un­ til the early thirties, the concepts of chemisorption, monolayer, adsorption sites, adsorption isotherm, sticking probability, cata­ lytic mechanisms by way of the interaction between chemisorbed spe­ cies, behavior of non-uniform surfaces and repulsion between adsor­ bed dipoles. It is fair to say that many of these ideas constituting the first revolution in surface chemistry have since been refined through thousands of investigations. Countless papers have been pu­ blished on the subject of the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, the Langmuir catalytic kinetics and the Langmuir site-exclusion adsorp­ tion kinetics. The refinements have been significant. ThE original concepts in their primitive or amended form are used everyday by catalytic chemists and chemical engineers allover the world in their treatment of experimental data, design of reactors or inven­ tion of new processes.

This book is an outcome of the NATO institute on surface modification which was held in Trevi, 1981. Surface modification and alloying by ion, electron or laser beams is proving to be one of the most burgeoning areas of materials science. The field covers such diverse areas as integrated circuit processing to fabricating wear and corrosion resistant surfaces on mechanical components. The common scientific questions of interest are the microstructures by the different energy deposition techniques. and associated physical properties produced The chapters constitute a critical review of the various subjects covered at Trevi. Each chapter author took responsibility for the overall review and used contributions from the many papers presented at the meeting; each participant gave a presentation. The contributors are listed at the start of each chapter. We took this approach to get some order in a large and diverse field. We are indebted to all the contributors, in particular the chapter authors for working the many papers into coherent packages; to Jim Mayer for hosting a workshop of chapter authors at Cornell and to Ian Bubb who did a sterling job in working over some of the manuscripts. Our special thanks are due to the text processing center at Bell Labs who took on the task of assembling the book. In particular Karen Lieb and Beverly Heravi typed the whole manuscript and had the entire book phototypeset using the Bell Laboratories UNIX™ system.

Synthesis of nonequilibrium metallic phases has been an area of great interest to the materials processing community since early 1960. Inherent rapid cooling rates in laser processing are being used to engineer non-equilibrium microstructures which cannot be rivaled by other processes. This lecture will discuss the phenomena involved and its application in designing materials with tailored properties. What is non-equilibrium Synthesis? This is a synthesis method to produce binary or higher order materials where kinetics of the pro­ cess affects the transport of the constituent elements during phase transformation resulting in a composition or crystallographic configuration which is different from what is observed when the elements arranges themselves with the lowest possible Gibbs Free energy, which is the equilibrium condition. Figure 1 illustrates the phenomena. Phase diagram under equilibrium condition is illustrated by the solid line whereas the no-equilibrium phase diagram is represented by the dotted line. One can observe the shrinkage of the phase field under non-equilibrium condition. Any alloy composition between the solidus lines of the equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagram will be a non­ equilibrium alloys with extended solid solution.

The 17th University Conference on Ceramics, which also was the 7th LBL/MMRD International Materials Symposium, was held on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley from July 28 to August 1, 1980. It was devoted to the subject of surfaces and interfaces in ceramic and ceramic-metal systems. The program was timely and of great interest, as indicated by the large number of contributed papers, which included contributions from ten foreign countries. These proceedings are divided into the following categories dealing with the chemistry and physics of interfaces: calculations of interface/surface states, characterization of surfaces and inter­ faces, thermodynamics of interfaces, influence of surface and inter­ faces on selected ceramic processes, grain boundary structures, effects of grain boundaries on deformation and fracture, interfacial phenomena, formation of interfaces, development of adhesion, and reactions at interfaces. A number of papers deal specifically with the Si-Si02 interface, which probably has received more attention than any other because of its importance in the electronics industry. This coverage fulfills the principal objective of the symposium which was to explore and assess the current fundamental understand­ ing of interfaces and surfaces. A parallel objective of the symposium was fulfilled by a group of papers dealing with the correlation of interfacial characteris­ tics with mechanical behavior. This group includes papers dealing with the adherence of dissimilar materials at interfaces.

One of the most important issues in the construction of future magnetic confinement fusion machines is that of the materials of which they are constructed, and one of the key points of proper material choice is the recycle of hydrogen isotopes with materials at the plasma face. Tritium machines demand high safety and economy, which in turn requires the lowest possible T inventory and smallest possible permeation through the plasma facing materials. The recycle behaviour of the in-vessel components must also be known if the plasma reaction is to predictable and controllable, and finally, the fuel cycle and plasma operating regimes may be actively controlled by special materials and methods. The book discusses both laboratory experiments exploring the basic properties of non-equilibrium hydrogen-solid systems (diffusion, absorption, boundary processes) and experimental results obtained from existing fusion machines under conditions simulating future situations to some extent. Contributions are from experts in the fields of nuclear fusion, materials science, surface science, vacuum science and technology, and solid state physics.

We present here the transcripts of lectures and talks which were delivered at the NATO ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTE'Electrons in Disordered Hetals and at ~~etallic Surfaces'held at the State University of Ghent, Belgium between August 28 and September 9, 1978. The aim of these lectures was to highlight some of the current progress in our understanding of the degenerate electron'liquid'in an external field which is neither uniform nor periodic. This theme brought together such topics as the electronic structure at metallic surfaces and in random metallic alloys, liquid metals and metallic glasses. As is the case in connection with infinite order­ ed crystals, the central issues to be discussed were the nature of the electronic spectra, the stability of the various phases and the occurrence of such phenomena as magnetism and supercon­ ductivity. In the theoretical lectures the emphasis was on detailed rea­ listic calculations based, more or less, on the density functional approach to the problem of the inhomogeneous electron liquid. How­ ever, where such calculations were not available, as in the case of magnetism in random alloys and that of metallic glasses, sim­ pler phenomenological models were used. The theoretical discussions were balanced by reviews of the most promising experimental techniques. Here the stress was on results and their relevance to the fundamental theory. lforeover, the attention had centered on those experiments which probe the electronic structure in the greatest detail.

The analogy between the chemistry of molecular transition metal clusters and the processes of chemisorption and catalysis at metal surfaces (the Cluster Surface analogy) has for a number of years provided an interplay between experimental and theoretical inorganic and physical chemists. This collaborative approach has born fruit in the use of well defined modes of metal-ligand bonding in discrete molecular clusters, models for metal-ligand binding on surfaces. Some of the key topics discussed in The Synergy between Dynamics and Reactivity at Clusters and Surfaces are: (1) Mechanisms of the fluxional behaviour in clusters in the liquid phase and the connections with diffusion processes on extended surfaces. The role of metal-metal bond breaking in diffusion. (2) Analogies in the structure of chemisorbed species and related ligands on metallic clusters. (3) Analogies between benzene surface chemistry on extended metal surfaces and on metal surfaces in molecular cluster compounds with particular reference to structural distortions. (4) The role of mobile precursors for dissociation of chemisorption on extended metals and on clusters. Are there analogies in the ligand attachment during cluster compound synthesis? (5) The role of defect sites on metal surfaces in catalyzing chemical reactions and the connection to the special bonding properties of sites on metal clusters having lowest metal-metal coordination. (6) The size of metal clusters needed to mimic surface phenomena on bulk metal surfaces. Different sites needed for different phenomena.

Selected, peer reviewed papers from the 9th International Symposium on Precision Surface Finishing and Deburring Technology (ICSD 2007), 5 - 7 November, 2007, Suzhou, China

Published in cooperation with IOM Communications Ltd, London.

As engineering materials and structures often contain a metal or metallic alloy bonded to a ceramic, the resultant interface must be able to sustain mechanical forces without failure. They also play an important role in oxidation or reduction of materials. The workshop on'Bonding, Structure and Mechanical Properties of Metal/Ceramic Interfaces'was held in January 1989 within the Acta/Scripta Metallurgica conference series. It drew together an international collection of 70 scientists who discussed a wide range of issues related to metal-ceramic interfaces. The sessions were divided into 7 categories: structure and bonding, chemistry at interfaces, formation of interfaces, structure of interfaces, thermodynamics/atomistics of interface fracture, mechanics of interface cracks, and fracture resistance of bimaterial interfaces. Within these headings attention was paid to grain boundaries, the influence of chemical processes on the behaviour of interfaces, diffusion bonding, characterization of fracture, and crack propagation by fatigue and by stress corrosion. The book presents a useful reference source for materials scientists, physicists, chemists, and mechanical engineers who are concerned with the roles and properties of interfaces.

Characterization of Metal and Polymer Surfaces, Volume 1: Metal Surfaces presents the proceedings of the Symposium on Advances in Characterization of Metal and Polymer Surfaces, held in New York, on April 5–8, 1976. This book provides information pertinent to surface science and discusses the applications of surface analyses to polymer technology. Organized into five parts encompassing 19 chapters, this compilation of papers starts with an overview of the important innovations of surface analyses and discusses the possible applications of each method to polymer technology. This text then explores atom-probe field ion microscopy, which is the most sensitive micro-analytical tool that combines the single atom resolution of a field ion microscope with mass spectrometric single ion identification. Other chapters discuss the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy as a technique for studying corrosion phenomena. The final chapter deals with the capabilities and limitations of the method of inelastic electron tunnelling. This book is a valuable resource for analytical and polymer chemists.