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Science 18 April 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5618, pp. 443 - 444
DOI: 10.1126/science.1083759
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Perspectives

MATERIALS SCIENCE:
The More Elements, the Merrier

Gary Shiflet

New alloy materials are commonly discovered by trial and error, a labor-intensive approach that is not well suited for alloys containing more than two or three elements. But as Shiflet explains in his Perspective, new approaches based on computational thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are heralding a new age of alloy discovery. He highlights the report by Saito et al., who have used such an approach to discover a new superplastic, multifunctional Ti alloy containing five elements. Because of the strict chemical constraints, such a complex material would most likely never be designed using a trial-and-error approach.

The author is in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA. E-mail: gjs{at}virginia.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)