In recent years, nanocomposites have captured and held the attention and imagination of scientists and engineers alike. Based on the simple premise that by using a wide range of building blocks with dimensions in the nanosize region, it is possible to design and create new materials with unprecedented flexibility and improvements in their physical properties.
This book contains the essence of this emerging technology, the underlying science and motivation behind the design of these structures and the future, particularly from the perspective of applications. It is intended to be a reference handbook for future scientists and hence carries the basic science and the fundamental engineering principles that lead to the fabrication and property evaluation of nanocomposite materials in different areas of materials science and technology.
About the Author: Pulickel M. Ajayan is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University in 1989. After Three years of industrial research experience (NEC Corporation, Japan), he spent two years as a research scientist at the CNRS laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay in France and about a year and a half as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Metallforschung, Stuttgate in Germany. Professor Ajayan's research interests are mainly focused on the synthesis and characterization of one-dimensional nonostructures with special emphasis on carbon nano-tubes. He is a pioneer in the area of nanotubes and has published some of the key papers in the field with more than 3000 citations for his work in this area.

Linda S. Schadler is Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She graduated from Cornell University in 1985 with a B.S. in materials science and engineering and received a PhD in materials science and engineering in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania. After two years of post-doctoral work at IBM Yorktown Heights, Schadler served as a faculty member at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA before coming to Rensselaer. Professor Schadler is a current member of the National Materials Advisory Board. She serves on numerous professional committees and as education and outreach coordinator for the Center "Directed Assembly of Nanostructures".
Dr. Schadler received a National Science Foundation National Young Investigator award in 1994 and the ASM International Bradley Staughton Award for Teaching in 1997. She received a Dow Outstanding New Faculty member award from the American Society of Engineering Education in 1998.

Paul V. Braun received his BS degree, with distinction, from Cornell University, and his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998. Following a one year post-doctoral appointment at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at U-C in 1999 as an assistant professor of materials Science and Engineering. He is the recipient of a 2001 Beckman Young Investigator Award, a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, the 2002 Robert Lansing Hardy Award from TMS, and a Willett Faculty Scholar Award from the University of Illinois at U-C College of Engineering.