Chapter 2 Basic Structure and Organization of Atoms in a Material

Materials science is often described as being comprised of structureproperty relationships. In this context structure refers not only to the arrangement of the basic building blocks, or long-range ordering but also to the chemical structure or short-range ordering. Material is made of atoms/molecules. In order to better understand structure-property relationships of materials, two fundamental concepts need to be taken into account. The first is the forces that hold the atoms/molecules together in a matter, in other words, the bonding between atoms/molecules, which can be basically categorized into metallic bonding, ionic bonding, covalence bonding and molecular bonding. The second important aspect is the atoms/molecules ordering within a material. This chapter will discuss these issues.