Materials science

Materials science refers to the understanding and manipulation of materials to benefit technological advances in all aspects of health, engineering and manufacturing industries. Materials science is a discipline that is highly interdisciplinary, and draws upon the fundamental principles from physics, chemistry and biology for the creation of materials with specific, targeted needs.

Materials science course at Monash covers a broad range of topics including crystallography, thermodynamics, biological engineering and solid mechanics, before focusing on real-world applications of the wide of spectrum of materials ranging from polymers, ceramics, metals, metal alloys to biomaterials, nanomaterials and functional materials. Our laboratories have state of the art facilities for practical, hands-on training. Our lecturers are all active researchers as well as teachers, ensuring each course taught at Monash reflects the most recent advances in materials science.

Materials science professionals make a unique contribution to the design of new devices, products and components by developing new materials or by improving existing ones by altering material properties. Materials science essentially underpins careers as metallurgists, plastics engineers, ceramists, adhesive scientists in a variety of industries such as solar energy and battery devices, biomedical implants and drug delivery, chemical and pharmaceutical industries and aerospace and automotive industries.

Availability

Materials science is listed in S2000 Bachelor of Science, S3001 Bachelor of Science Advanced - Global Challenges (Honours) and S3002 Bachelor of Science Advanced - Research (Honours) at Clayton as a major or minor.

Outcomes

In addition to achieving the broad outcomes of their course, students successfully completing this major will be able to:

• demonstrate a clear understanding of the relationship between structure, property, processing and performance of various classes of materials (such as metals, polymers, ceramics, nanomaterials and biomaterials)
• gain proficiency in various techniques used in characterisation of materials and recognise the limitations at the experimental level
• integrate the acquired knowledge of materials to understand and extend their functionalities in devices and applications
• recognise the importance of the role materials play in everyday life, especially in developing new devices and manufacturing technologies and in the challenges in addressing sustainability.