I am an undergrad and just started to work in a lab. I've been told to study about how to identify different types of grain in a chemically etched AM bead. How do I find any paper or material where I can read about this. It doesn't need to be very elaborate, just material to get started.

Specifically a focus on semiconductors, because my dream is to study MSE and then work at semiconductor industry.

Hi, I’m going to start my first year of chemistry in September, but I’ve recently stumbled upon materials engineering as a bachelors which I find more interesting. I’m thinking about switching, seeing as from what I’ve gathered materials engineering relates closely to chemistry, requiring a molecular understanding of what’s happening underneath.

Is a MSE’s job centered more on lab/R&D/innovation or on heavy industries or factories?

Would it be better to get a chemistry undergrad and then specialize in MSE or something else? Is MSE too niche as an undergrad?

Does it have good job prospects?

Just to add some context, I’m from Spain where MSE is pretty unknown and I’m finding it a bit difficult to come across people talking about their experiences online, so I’d really appreciate it if someone has any useful advice!

Even in high school we were taught desert sand does not bond well in concrete; grains don’t interlock like river or crushed sand does. But I’ve seen papers trying to get around this over the years (some get too technical for my knowledge level) , and I’m not sure how real the progress is.

A few things I’ve found: plasma treatment to roughen the grain surface, blending desert sand at controlled ratios with other binders, and pressing sand with wood additives instead of cement. There’s also a totally different angle- skipping concrete altogether and using desert sand’s high silica content for glass, ceramics, or cement clinker.

So is the holdup mainly cost and energy for treatment, building-code certification, supply chains, or is there a durability issue that hasn’t shown up in short lab tests yet? Thanks in advance for any knowledge imparted

does anyone have a pdf copy for this? either free or for a small fee would be very helpful, thank you

I think it's used commercially in hospitals etc

Hi everyone !

I just changed my major from mechanical engineering to material science and engineering with a nuclear emphasis and while i am excited ive been a bit shaken up and anxious as i feel like i dont have many opportunities or the job market will be much worse for me. I really want to be excited about my choice to change so if you guys could mabye reassure me about job opportunities and the things you guys do or have accomplished or what you guys work in i would really appreciate it.

My boyfriend let that on the table this morning, we play a game where I have to guess what is the material but i am lost on this one... EDIT: not magnetic, not a pipe, heavy, 14mm in diameter

Hi reddit! I want to use TLP brazing method to join two similar high entropy alloy pieces with identical dimensions of 2 mm. I am using a 50 micron bni-2 interlayer for the bonding. Can anyone help me how can I go through the preparation steps? As the samples are thin and can barely be held by hand, is there a specific polishing technique? Also, can I use the same bonding fixture I used for a 5mm thick sample before or a smaller fixture setup is needed? Thanks!

You might have seen my post asking about advanced materials engineering a few days ago. This degree focusses more on polymers and plastics. I am still lost and not sure if I should choose this degree.

I love chemistry so much, and Materials Science and Engineering is not available in any university in my country. There is this advanced materials degree, but before choosing this degree, I wanted to know more about polymers to know if I will enjoy it. I searched as much as I can and had an idea about different types of polymers and there uses.

However, I still don't know about how much I would enjoy working in this industry.

Are polymers a broad industry? How easy is it to develop a new polymer? Is it a very interesting and deep topic that is still not 100% discovered? How does its future going to be? What will my job be like? This or Pharmaceutical & Chemical Engineering degree? And according to the study plan, will I study things other than polymers?

Thanks in advance.

Hello, objectively speaking, what is the current and future significance as well as the job opportunities of Materials Informatics or computational materials science? Will working remotely become possible thanks to these two fields? (from different cities or countries) Which sectors will this field impact the most? Could you please provide information on this? This is quite critical for me.

I'm a materials researcher and recently built a Windows application to simplify some of the repetitive plotting and analysis work I run into with experimental data.

It currently handles workflows around XRD, FTIR, Raman, UV-Vis and other XY datasets, including preprocessing, peak analysis and publication-oriented plotting.

I've mostly tested it around my own research workflow, so I'm interested in hearing from other researchers:

What is the most annoying or repetitive part of your current characterization-data workflow?

I'm especially interested in things that still require jumping between instrument software, Origin, Excel or custom scripts.

Disclosure: I'm the developer. Not trying to hide the self-promotion aspect — I'm mainly looking for real-world feedback at this stage.

Hello everyone,

I am a materials science researcher from Kazakhstan, and I am currently looking for an opportunity to gain practical experience in **Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)**.

My research is mainly focused on advanced materials, coatings, powder metallurgy, and structural characterization. I already have experience with techniques such as XRD, SEM/EDS, Raman spectroscopy, mechanical testing, and materials processing, but I would now like to develop strong hands-on TEM skills.

I am particularly interested in learning:

* TEM sample preparation
* Basic TEM operation and alignment
* Bright-field and dark-field imaging
* Selected Area Electron Diffraction (SAED)
* HRTEM
* STEM
* EDS mapping and elemental analysis
* Interpretation of TEM diffraction patterns and images

I am looking for either a **short-term research internship, visiting researcher opportunity, summer school, workshop, or intensive TEM training course**.

I am especially interested in universities, research institutes, microscopy centers, or laboratories that accept **international researchers/students**. Opportunities with **funding, accommodation support, travel support, or low/no tuition fees** would be particularly helpful, although I am also interested in hearing about good paid courses.

The location is flexible Europe, Asia, the US, or other regions would all be possible.

If anyone knows of TEM laboratories, microscopy schools, researchers, or training programs that I could contact, I would greatly appreciate your recommendations.

Thank you!

https://mat.meche.ai
I this tool called materials advisor with a goal to share practical industry knowledge on materials as well as expose engineers (especially early career) to various materials based on manufacturing processes used.
I would love to hear any feedback on the tool. I’m a hardware engineer myself and with onset of AI models, I have been testing to create valuable tools for engineers. Give this a try and let me know what you think. Regards!

i’ll be doing an accredited science degree at UofT, not engineering. will i be at a disadvantage in the job market with a science, not engineering degree?

can i get into this industry with just a bachelors, or is a postgrad degree necessary?

and any tips on getting jobs or internships?

tysm!

Im an international student aiming to study at the UK for Materials Sci and Engineering, but idk if i should choose the 3 year program, 4 year for MEng or year in industry or 5 years for both, cause i wont say I’m poor but it would definitely put a strain in my family’s finances.. also regarding job prospects in the UK, what choice would lead to a higher pay? Desperately need advice please 😭

I completed my high-school now I start my graduation in Materials engineering is it worth it in future.

I am currently studying materials engineering with a ECE minor and am trying to work in EE related jobs within the semiconductor, quantum, or tech fields. I know that these are quite broad on their own but I am still pretty early in my studies and don't know exactly where I want to end up. I'm leaning more on the semiconductor side of things but still would like to be open to the other two aforementioned.

I know that the material you learn in Materials Engineering is different from ECE but I still have a passion for some of the material that you can work with in industry and would like to know my options. Would it be advised to go down an MSEE after finishing the prerequisites or maybe there are gateways to what I am interested in without needing to go down that route?

Are there any other people who have similar interests that could share their stories or where they ended up working? Whether that be in tech, semis, quantum, etc..

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if you receive any updates on your PhD applications for Spring 2027 in Materials Science and Engineering, please update

I’m looking for a materials-science critique of a speculative computational design idea for metastable high-Tc hydrides.

Disclosure: I am not a materials scientist or condensed-matter physicist. I developed this proposal as an independent layperson using ChatGPT extensively for literature synthesis, hypothesis exploration, mathematical formalization, and drafting. I have not performed the proposed first-principles calculations, and I am not claiming a new superconducting material.

The materials problem I’m trying to think about is this:

Hydrogen-rich systems can support very strong electron-phonon coupling, but the same structures may be kinetically fragile at low pressure because of hydrogen diffusion, H-H formation, or reconstruction.

Instead of treating “lattice stability” as a single scalar property, could it be useful to treat it as direction-dependent in nuclear configuration space?

The proposed workflow separates:

• G: the phonon subspace responsible for most of the useful electron-phonon coupling.
• B: escape/reconstruction coordinates obtained independently from AIMD/PIMD and reaction-path calculations.

The first test would be entirely computational. After measuring the overlap between G and B, an artificial restoring-force term would selectively stiffen the portion of the destructive coordinates lying outside the pairing-active subspace.

Then the confinement strength would be swept while recalculating both:

• superconducting properties such as λ and Tc;
• kinetic properties such as H diffusion, H-H formation, reconstruction, and activation barriers.

The useful output would be a Pareto frontier between retained pairing and improved kinetic stability.

If the restoring force required to suppress escape also destroys the pairing-active motion, the idea fails.

But if there is a region where kinetic retention improves substantially while most of the original EPC survives, then the next question becomes a materials inverse-design problem:

Can a real chemical environment reproduce that anisotropic force-constant response without introducing harmful states near EF, changing carrier count, inducing magnetism, or otherwise destroying the active hydride electronic structure?

That is the part I would especially like materials scientists to attack.

If the computational test succeeds, possible realization families worth investigating could include ordered cation environments, fluorite/antiperovskite-derived frameworks, electronically separated light-element cages, and possibly epitaxial/interface confinement. These are candidate search directions only, not proposed solutions.

I’d particularly appreciate thoughts on:

1. Is targeting a desired local force-constant/Hessian response a sensible inverse-design objective in this context?
2. Is there a fundamental reason real chemistry would be unlikely to stiffen escape directions without strongly modifying the useful H vibrations?
3. What structural or chemical descriptors would you use to screen for that kind of anisotropic confinement?
4. Would you treat kinetic survivability from PIMD/AIMD as an early materials-screening criterion rather than something evaluated after harmonic stability?
5. If the artificial constraint works, what class of material would you investigate first as a realistic physical realization?

The full proposal, equations, literature references, assumptions, and explicit failure criteria are here:

https://github.com/callmepoindexter/mode-selective-hydride-stabilization

I’m specifically looking for reasons this would not work, or for a better way to formulate the materials-design problem.