This book presents a wealth of valuable up-to-date information for active researchers and engineers, and will certainly form a solid basis for any future research, in the field of abrasive technology, which is aimed at creating new and practical machine tools, systems and processes, or at identifying new characteristics.

The present book comprises ninety-two papers, by leading scientists from 21 countries, thematically arranged into ten sections: I Nanostructures and Thin Films; II Solid State Phenomena; III Nanomaterials; IV Advanced Materials; V Materials for Electrochemistry; VI Spectroscopic Characterization; VII Synthesis and Processing; VIII Powders, Ceramics and Sintering; IX Composites and X Biomaterials.

These volumes contain the contributions presented at DIMAT 2004: the Sixth International Conference on Diffusion in Materials, held in Cracow, under the Patronage of the AGH University of Science and Technology, the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Cracow University of Technology.

Multifunctional materials are composite systems that exhibit useful responses to electrical, optical, magnetic and/or mechanical stimuli. They allow the compact and economic integration of two or more functions; which can be mechanical, biological, acoustic, thermal, electrical, magnetic, optical or sensory in nature. Functionally graded materials (FGM) are also multi-functional materials, which exhibit spatial variations in composition and/or microstructure; created with the specific purpose of controlling variations in thermal, structural or functional properties. In spite of large differences in the type and size scale of the materials considered, many common features exist, thus furnishing a rationale for grouping these materials together in one book.

The field of Residual Stresses is surprisingly large, and also highly interdisciplinary in nature, both with regard to its applications and to its scientific and technological fundamentals.

This indispensable work is the fifth in a series of international conferences devoted to advanced materials and processing. The conferences, which are held every three years, are jointly sponsored by the Chinese Society for Metals (CSM), the Japan Institute of Metals (JIM), the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials (KIM), and the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), and organized by them in rotation. The purpose of this international conference, PRICM, is to provide a forum for the exchange of technical and scientific information, which is always of great benefit to researchers, manufacuturers and end-users.

This special issue of Materials Science Forum contains the papers which were presented at the 1st International Meeting on Applied Physics (APHYS-2003), held in Badajoz (Spain), and more specifically, the selected papers which were presented during the conference sessions on Interfaces in Colloidal and Particulate Systems, covering Imaging Techniques, Microscopy; Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Bioengineered Materials, Applied Materials Science / Solid State Physics & Chemistry / Advanced and Functional Materials and Semiconductor Materials and Devices.

In recent years, bulk and graded nanometals have attracted the growing interest of materials scientists. Nanometals can be obtained by using various methods: gas condensation or ball-milling with subsequent consolidation, thermal spray techniques, annealing of thin amorphous ribbons and severe plastic deformation. The plastic deformation methods include severe torsional straining under high pressures, equal channel angular pressing, cyclic extrusion compression - and others.

This collection comprises a selection of over 180 papers; submitted to the editors by numerous universities and industrial concerns, and subjected to peer-review by at least two expert referees. The papers were selected on the basis of their quality, and their combined coverage of the main topics of the book.

Recrystallization and grain growth, together with phase transformations such as precipitation, are the fundamental processes of microstructural evolution which take place during the thermomechanical processing of engineering materials. They are of major scientific interest and are of great importance in a wide range of industrial applications.