The College of Engineering - Chemical Engineering

Materials Specialization

The requirements for the materials specialization are analogous to the requirements for the biological engineering specialization, in that they include an introductory course, Materials Science, that is required for all chemical engineering students, followed by project work and enrollment in approved electives. 

In order to earn the specialization in materials, students must earn four credits by spending at least two of their four semesters of Junior/Senior Engineering Clinic working on materials projects.  These projects can be housed in any of the four engineering disciplines, but must be approved by the Chemical Engineering faculty as having substantial materials content.  Note that students can also fulfill the project requirement through independent study on materials-related projects (Independent Study in Engineering 0901.391).

Students earn the remaining six credits towards the specialization by taking one elective from each of the following lists.  In order to underscore the diverse applications and multidisciplinary nature of materials science, we will require students to take one chemistry or chemical engineering elective, and one materials elective outside of chemical engineering.  Note that a chemistry course can be used to fulfill either requirement, but no one course can be used to fulfill both. 

Approved Materials Electives from ChE or Chemistry                               

0906.406               Polymer Processing

0906.490               Approved Special Topics Course

1905.430               Approved Advanced Topics in Chemistry

• Introduction to Polymer Chemistry
• Polymer Synthesis
• Polymer Characterization

Approved Materials Electives from outside Chemical Engineering

0908.301               Civil Engineering Materials

0910.422               Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics

1905.430               Approved Advanced Topics in Chemistry

1907.405               Introduction to Polymer Chemistry

1907.475               Polymer Synthesis

1907.478               Polymer Characterization

• Interdisciplinary Materials Science

Other Approved Courses

List of current materials clinic projects (Spring 2005) that would fulfill requirements:

ME-01             Plastics Ignition Experiment Development

ME-06             Development and Testing of Component Packaging for an Optical Filter

ME-07             Magneto-Rheological Rubber Development and Testing

ECE-01           Nano-Imprint Lithography

ECE-02           Molecular Electronics

ECE-03           Materials For Biomedical Research

CEE-07           Measurement and Visualization of Strain Using Computer Vision

CEE-10           Evaluation of New Pavement Design Guide

CEE-11           Evaluating Sources of Rutting within New Pavement

CEE-12           Evaluating Mixture Performance using Design Guide

CEE-14           Anchorage of Rebar in Fiber Reinforced Concrete

CHE-03           Performance Testing of Kevlar-Derakane Composites

CHE-04           Materials Science Education