Proceedings of a NATO ARW held in Fort Collins, Colorado, July 15-18, 1991

Materials Under Extreme Conditions: Recent Trends and Future Prospects analyzes the chemical transformation and decomposition of materials exposed to extreme conditions, such as high temperature, high pressure, hostile chemical environments, high radiation fields, high vacuum, high magnetic and electric fields, wear and abrasion related to chemical bonding, special crystallographic features, and microstructures. The materials covered in this work encompass oxides, non-oxides, alloys and intermetallics, glasses, and carbon-based materials. The book is written for researchers in academia and industry, and technologists in chemical engineering, materials chemistry, chemistry, and condensed matter physics. - Describes and analyzes the chemical transformation and decomposition of a wide range of materials exposed to extreme conditions - Brings together information currently scattered across the Internet or incoherently dispersed amongst journals and proceedings - Presents chapters on phenomena, materials synthesis, and processing, characterization and properties, and applications - Written by established researchers in the field

There has been extraordinary developments in the field of high-pressure materials research. Presented within traditional forums of geoscience and planetary science, materials science under pressure is acquiring a life of its own and high pressure is being used as a window to explore problems in these fields. It is undeniable that high-pressure research has gained a number of contributors from outside the community and occurred as tabletop high-pressure experiments became possible due to the use of diamond anvils cells, the development of accurate and convenient pressure and accelerating developments in techniques used for probing physical and chemical properties of materials at high pressure. This book highlights materials science at the intersection of diverse disciplines. Topics include: earth materials at high pressure; dynamic compression; static compression; new techniques - theory and experiments; high-pressure synthesis and superhard materials; hydrogen at high temperature; semi-conductors and superconductors at high pressure; dense solids - molecular and metallic; and metastability, amorphization and glasses.

Recently, it was reported that nanostructured materials processed under high pressure by HPT and ECAP have an extraordinary combination of both high strength and high ductility, which are two desirable, but rarely co-existing properties. These findings indicate that high-pressure is a critical factor that can be employed to process nanostructured materials with superior mechanical, and possibly also physical, properties. It is the objective of this workshop to review our current knowledge, identify issues for future research, and discuss future directions on the processing and properties of nanostructured materials via SPD techniques, with a special emphasis on high-pressure effects. The 42 peer-reviewed papers in this book cover areas of high pressure effect on the nanostructure and properties of SPD-processed materials, fundamentals of nanostructured materials, development of high-pressure SPD technologies for commercializations, recent advances of SPD technologies as well as applications and future markets of SPD-processed nanostructured materials.

This monograph, which is the outcome of the ASI on High Pressure Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Materials Science, illustrates new developments in the field of high pressure science. In fact, for chemists, biochemists, and materials scientists, pressure as an experimental variable represents a tool which provides unique information about systems of materials studied. It is interesting to note how the growth of the high pressure field is also reflected in the content of the recent ASI's dealing with this field. The ASI High Pressure Chemistry held in 1977 was followed by the ASI High Pressure Chemistry and Biochemistry held in 1986, and the coverage of the present ASI also includes applications to materials science. In view of the teaching character of the ASI, it is natural that main contributions to this volume present overviews of the different subfields or applications of high pressure research. In contrast, contributed papers offer more specialized aspects of various high pressure studies. The various contributions to this volume make clear the impressive range of fundamental and applied problems that can be studied by high pressure techniques, and also point towards a major growth of high pressure science and technology in the near future. This ASI focused mainly on advances achieved in the six years since the previous ASI devoted to the high pressure field. The organization of this volume is as follows.

Within the last two decades, the experimental technology for the study of high temperature solid-vapor and liquid-vapor equilibria has mushroomed so fast that· both academic and industrial research ers desirous of working in this field -- be they physical chemists, metallurgists, ceramists, petrologists, crystal chemists, or mem bers of any of the several branches of materials science -- find themselves in the situation that in order to learn the art of the latest techniques, a period of apprenticeship or residency needs be spent at an institution or laboratory currently engaged in this type of solid-vapor or liquid-vapor research. The tech niques for control of the vapor phase at total pressures of one atmosphere or greater have not been well defined in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this volume will be to serve as a labora tory manual for the control, calibration, and measurement of high temperature-high pressure equilibria. The avowed aims of this treatment of experimental techniques are: (1) to give, in terms understandable at the graduate student level, the laboratory procedures necessary to the design and utilization of good experimental technique, (2) to list the limitations, dangers, and technical pitfalls inherent or intrinsic to the described techniques, (3) to give theory and specific data only where they are essential to the experimental design, (4) to give with each chapter references that are extensive enough to serve as a bibliography of the state-of-the-art of technique development within the last decade.

The aim of the celebrated High Pressure School (HPS) is to provide a platform where both young and experienced researchers can meet and exchange their experiences in high-pressure research and techniques. Since 1996, four schools have been held in Warsaw and the tradition has developed of combining the topic of high pressure techniques with workshops which are related to the rapidly developing fields of high pressure science and technology: chemistry, biology and materials science; with particular attention being paid to nanostructured materials. Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS).