NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the Councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was established by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and of advising the federal government. The Council operates in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy under the authority of its congressional charter of 1863, which established the Academy as a private, nonprofit, self-governing membership corporation. The Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in the conduct of their services to the government, the public, and the scientific and the engineering communities. It is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. The National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine were established in 1964 and 1970, respectively, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences.

This work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under grant No. DE-FG01–81ER10844 and by the National Science Foundation under grant No. DMR 8119500.

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Solid State Science Committee

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Are the human and material resources allocated to the scientific and technological development of the synthesis and characterization of advanced materials (SACAM) sufficient to meet the needs of the coming decades? This question has been of continuing concern to the Solid State Sciences Committee (SSSC) of the National Research Council over the past several years. Although an appreciable portion of the SSSC’s activity during this time has been related to various aspects of SACAM, its concerns in this regard were first brought into focus at a SACAM Workshop held on December 11–13, 1978, in Washington, D.C. A substantial number of solid-state chemists and other scientists from closely related disciplines participated in this workshop, which stimulated considerable subsequent discussion of SACAM throughout the solid-state chemistry community—discussion that continues.

This report is based on the SACAM Workshop and the discussion it engendered; thus it is principally an assessment of the status and future directions of SACAM from the perspective of solid-state chemists and of other scientists who interact closely with solid-state chemists. In a very real sense, this report has grown beyond the bounds of the original SACAM Workshop; a major portion of it, notably Part I, the SACAM Summary Report, has been written in its final form during 1983, and the entire report has been reviewed and updated as appropriate. Accordingly, we believe that this report presents an accurate picture of the current status of SACAM.

The SACAM Workshop was sponsored by the SSSC and was planned in consultation with representatives of the Solid State Chemistry Subdivision of the American Chemical

Society (ACS). Advice on subjects to be included in the workshop was sought from representatives of the funding agencies and from senior researchers and managers in materials preparation and characterization. The purpose of the workshop was to provide an evaluation of the achievements, strengths, future directions, and needs of solid-state materials synthesis and characterization in the United States on the basis of the views of practitioners in the field. The participants were drawn principally from the solid-state community, with emphasis on solid-state chemists and other scientists who have collaborated with solid-state chemists. Every effort was made to assure the widest possible participation in the workshop by members of this community.

The SACAM Workshop opened with four introductory talks:

1. N.B.Hannay, Bell Laboratories, “SACAM: A Technological View”

2. J.R.Goodenough, Oxford University, “SACAM: A View from Another Country”

3. D.A.Shirley, University of California, Berkeley, “SACAM: An Academic View”

4. D.K.Stevens, U.S. Department of Energy, “SACAM: The Government Agency”

Section V of Appendix A contains some of the highlights of these talks.

Five panels then convened to evaluate various aspects of SACAM. The panel topics were

1. Problems Related to the Character of SACAM Research

2. Scientific Challenges Arising from Technological Needs

3. Interdependence of Synthesis and Characterization

4. Training and Orientation of Personnel for the Advanced Materials Field

5. Instrumentation and Facilities

Scientific and Technological leaders from industry, universities, and the federal government, covering a broad range of geographical locations and scientific interests, served on these panels. Panel chairmen and members are listed in Section II of Appendix A. A number of additional people who attended and participated in the deliberations are listed in Section IV of Appendix A.

Each panel met for three half-day sessions and then presented a report on its deliberations to all the workshop participants.

Following the SACAM Workshop, each panel prepared a first draft of its report and circulated it among the workshop participants and the solid-state chemistry community. The ensuing discussions were both extensive and substantive and led to considerable revisions of the panel reports. The five panel reports constitute Part II of this document.

The Report Committee (See Section III of Appendix A) abstracted and summarized the five panel reports to provide an initial draft of a summary of the workshop. This initial draft was then also circulated among the workshop participants and the solid-state chemistry community. The consequent discussions were again extensive and substantive and resulted in revision and expansion of the summary to encompass a greater variety of concerns than had been addressed by the SACAM Workshop. Therefore, the SACAM Summary Report (Part I), presents the conclusions and recommendations of the Workshop and of the discussion it engendered, as well as the accomplishments, strengths, resources, and opportunities of SACAM.

As this report goes to press, four recent developments indicate growing awareness of some of the needs it discusses and of the attempts being made to deal with them: (a) there have been numerous symposia on solid-state chemistry at recent ACS meetings; (b) the first and second Gordon Research Conferences on Solid State Chemistry were held in the summers of 1980 and 1982, and a Gordon Research Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Solids was held in the summer of 1981; (c) the August 1980 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education contained 14 papers from a symposium, Solid State Chemistry in the Undergraduate Curriculum; and (d) the Department of Defense (DOD) has announced a 5-year, $150 million DOD-University Research Instrumentation Program. Further discussion of these recent developments appears in Chapter 2 of Part I, Section VI of the Panel 4 report, and Sections III and IV of the Panel 5 report.

We wish to emphasize that this report is the result of the deliberations and efforts of a large number of people and, as such, undoubtedly does not fully represent the views of any individual participant. Moreover, it is intended primarily for informational purposes.

We thank the SSSC for its sponsorship. We are also grateful to W.F.Brinkman, Martin Blume, E.Burstein, D. E.Eastman, and R.M.Thomson for advice before and during the writing of this report and to the panel chairmen, H.F.Franzen, N.Bartlett, G.A.Somorjai, R. A.Laudise, and L.Eyring, and the panelists and other participants in the SACAM Workshop.

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