This volume contains the proceedings of Symposium F, "Nanophase and Nanocomposite Materials III," held November 29-December 2, at the 1999 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. This symposium is the third one of this series which began at the 1992 MRS Fall Meeting. The objective of this third symposium was to provide a forum to review the recent advances in nanophase and nanocomposite materials and to address the future prospects for these materials. Scientists from many parts of the world participated to present and discuss synthesis, processing, properties and applications of nanophase and nanocomposite materials. A total of about 240 papers from 23 countries were presented from academic institutions, government research organizations, and private industries. The 107 papers published in this proceedings have been refereed and presented as nine chapters.

One of the goals of materials science is to design alloys with pre-specified desirable technological properties. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying materials behavior. In particular, one must understand the effects on alloy properties caused by intentional changes in concentration and how the combinations of temperature, time and uncontrollable foreign impurities affect microstructure. In addition to the equilibrium phase information contained in phase diagrams, nonequilibrium dynamic processes and metastable phases are known to be crucial in determining materials properties. This volume brings together researchers working on various aspects of nonequilibrium processes in materials to discuss current research issues and to provide guidelines for future work. Particular attention was paid to understanding particle nucleation and growth, both experimentally and theoretically, solid-state reactions, nanosystems, liquid-solid transformations, and solidification and amorphization. On the theoretical side, fundamental principles governing nucleation and growth, and related phenomena such as coarsening and Ostwald ripening, are discussed. Progress is also reported on the phase field method and on Monte Carlo simulations.