Structure-Property Relationship

The structure-property relationship is materials science's organising principle: that a material's mechanical, electrical, optical and chemical behaviour is governed by its structure, from atomic bonding and crystal lattice up through microstructural features like grain boundaries and phases, and that changing the processing that produces that structure changes what the material can do. Cyril Stanley Smith, drawing on his own metallurgical work on the Manhattan Project, argued for this structure-across-scales view as the idea that gives materials science its unity as a field distinct from separate studies of individual materials.