Materials Science and Engineering

Polymer Science and Technology

Material science has a wider range of applications which includes ceramics, composites and polymer materials. Bonding in ceramics and glasses uses both covalent and ionic-covalent types with SiO2 as a basic building block. Ceramics are as soft as clay or as hard as stone and concrete. Usually, they are crystalline in form. Most glasses contain a metal oxide fused with silica. Applications range from structural elements such as steel-reinforced concrete, to the gorilla glass. Polymers are also an important part of materials science. Polymers are the raw materials which are used to make what we commonly call plastics.  Specialty plastics are materials with distinctive characteristics, such as ultra-high strength, electrical conductivity, electro-fluorescence, high thermal stability. Plastics are divided not on the basis of their material but on its properties and applications. The competition in the global carbon fiber and carbon fiber reinforced plastic market is intense within a few large players, such as Toray Toho, Mitsubishi, Hexcel, Formosa, SGL carbon, Cytec, Aksa, Hyosung, Sabic, etc.