The second edition of this textbook, popular amongst students and faculty alike, investigates the various causes of thermodynamic instability in metallic microstructures. Materials theoretically well designed for a particular application may prove inefficient or even useless unless stable under normal working conditions. The authors examine current experimental and theoretical understanding of the kinetics behind structural change in metals. The entire text has been updated in this new edition, and a completely new chapter on highly metastable alloys has been added. The degree to which kinetic stability of the material outweighs its thermodynamic instability is very important, and dictates the useful working life of the material. If the structure is initially produced to an optimum, such changes will degrade the properties of the material. This comprehensive and well-illustrated text, accompanied by ample references, will allow final year undergraduates, graduate students and research workers to investigate in detail the stability of microstructure in metallic systems.

This volume contains most of the papers presented at symposium D, one of the four symposia that formed the 1988 Strasbourg Spring Conference. The three day programme consisted of nine oral sessions; a poster session and a plenary talk giving an overview of current topics in hard magnetic materials. Scientists involved in basic as well as applied research concentrated their discussions on the fundamental processes relevant for the formation of metastable alloys such as amorphous alloys (metallic glasses), microcrystalline, quasicrystalline and nanocrystalline alloys and their applications. These materials are proving to be of considerable interest to research workers because of their possible application in the electronics industry, e.g. as diffusion barriers in devices or as data storage media.

Materials with metastable structures and microstructures have been used with success to create unusual structural and functional properties and property combinations. Highly nonequilibrium technologies for creating metastable materials have been devised which allow materials to be prepared far away from the thermodynamic equilibrium. Using these methods, materials can now be designed to possess specific properties tailored to fit an application, rather than fitting an application to the properties of available materials. However, as these materials are metastable with respect to structural and compositional changes under temperature, there is great concern for understanding and controlling their limitations. This book features both fundamental as well as applied aspects of the subject by stressing the structure/property relationships, the conditions for stability of these materials, and the requirements for technological applications. In addition to the synthesis, processing, characterization, properties, and applications of such materials, attention is also focused on the modelling of structures, phenomena and processes. Topics include: synthesis and processing; thermodynamic and kinetics; phase transformations and properties and applications.

The First Workshop on Metastable and Nanostructured Materials was held in the city of São Pedro (Brazil) in August 2001. These proceedings contain 22 revised papers which concentrate mainly on the topics of bulk metallic glasses and nanocrystalline materials prepared via the chemical synthesis, devitrification of mechanical alloying and compaction routes. However, other important contributions here deal with the spray deposition process and polymeric materials, as well as with the resultant magnetic, mechanical, electromagnetic, electrochemical, catalytic and optical properties of the product materials.