The 3rd Asian Conference on the Heat Treatment of Materials (AHTM’05) provided a forum within which engineers, scientists, researchers and production managers could review and discuss recent progress and emerging topics in the fields of Advanced Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering Technology. General topics, and various R&D efforts related to heat treatment and surface engineering, were also covered at the Conference.

Japan is currently the most active country of all of those carrying out research in the rapidly expanding field of Electroceramics; a field that has tremendous implications for a wide range of high-tech applications.

Materials science and engineering is a multidisciplinary area of research which encompasses the physics, chemistry and engineering of every class of material. In recent years, the field has attracted increasing attention, following the discovery of new types of material and their subsequent application in new technologies.

This book contains more than 200 papers; all dealing with recent research findings related to engineering ceramics and associated materials. Particular emphasis is placed on the consideration of novel technical challenges and innovative technologies in advanced engineering ceramics: including new classes of high-temperature structural ceramics, nanomaterials/nanocomposites, environmental- and energy-related ceramics and so on, which are expected to open up new frontiers for engineering ceramics in the 21st century.

The aim of this book is to provide the reader with the latest advanced research results on, and an improved understanding of, various aspects of the processing and characterization of materials.

This collection comprises invited and contributed papers which were presented at the Advanced Structural Materials Symposium held in Cancún, México during the Annual Conference of the Mexican Academy of Materials Science.

This collection of papers provides the most up-to-date information available for researchers and engineers who are interested in any aspect of the field of solidification processes. Herein, theoretical analyses are presented, as well as studies of the technological problems which are associated with solidification in various gravitational environments. The topics covered range from fundamental aspects and modelling, to practical engineering applications.

Japan is currently the most active country involved in carrying out research in. the rapidly expanding field of Electroceramics ; a field that has tremendous implications for a wide range of high-tech applications.

The requirements of high precision and of high-quality components and devices in meeting the needs of modern industry and society in disciplines such as semiconductors, optics, nanotechnology, MEMS, manufacturing, biomedical and environmental engineering, make measurement technology and intelligent instruments (which sense, measure and report), more important than ever, and essential for the rapid development of information technology.

To the materials science community, Texture is an important property which describes the relative orientations of the various material elements which constitute the microstructure. These elements are usually the crystalline grains; each with a different orientation of its crystal lattice. However, morphological textures, such as the arrangement of fibers in a composite material, also have to be considered. In rare cases, the texture is random; with all possible orientations being equally represented in the material. But, usually, processing of the material has caused the texture to become non-random; with a consequent anisotropy of the material properties. Thus, not only metallurgists and materials scientists take an interest in textures, but also physicists, mathematicians, geologists, mechanical engineers and others.