Minor in Materials Science and Engineering

About the Minor

In addition to the core engineering curriculum and the courses required for majors in chemical, civil, architectural and environmental, electrical, or mechanical engineering, engineering students from other majors can complete a minor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) by completing 25.0 credits selected from the courses listed below.

Program Requirements

*

MATE 214 requires CHEM 241 as a pre-requisite. If MATE 214 is elected, the credits for CHEM 241 can count toward the 21 credits.

**

MATE 370 requires MATH 201 as a pre-requisite. If MATE 370 is elected, the credits for MATH 201 can count toward the 21 credits.

Note: Only one of the prerequisites (either MATH 201 or CHEM 241) can count toward the required 25.0 credits. In other words, both MATE 214 and MATE 370 can be used to fulfill the requirements for the minor, but only the prerequisite for one of those courses will be counted toward the 25.0 credits required for the minor. Similarly, neither MATH 201 nor CHEM 241 can be counted alone as fulfilling the requirements for this minor. The credits for MATH 201 or CHEM 241 will only count toward the minor when the course(s) is/are taken as a prerequisite for MATE 214 or MATE 370, respectively. Substitution for these courses by equivalent courses offered by other departments and/or institutions may be made with the approval of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering on a case-by-case basis. At least two-thirds of the content of a proposed substitute course must be the same as that of the course in the list above.

It is imperative that students check each course carefully with respect to prerequisites since some may be included in the list above and some may be from other departments. Courses taken outside of the MSE department as prerequisites do not count towards the 25.0 credits required for the minor. They may, however, be used as technical or free electives in students’ home departments. Students pursuing the minor in Materials Science and Engineering are also encouraged to select a Senior Design topic that relates to the field of materials.

Facilities

Nanobiomaterials and Cell Engineering Laboratory
This laboratory contains a fume hood with vacuum/gas dual manifold, vacuum pump and rotary evaporator for general organic/polymer synthesis; gel electrophoresis and electroblotting for protein characterization; bath sonicator, glass homogenizer and mini-extruder for nanoparticle preparation; centrifuge; ultrapure water conditioning system; precision balance; pH meter and shaker.

Ceramics Processing Laboratory
This laboratory contains a photo-resist spinner, impedance analyzer, Zeta potential meter, spectrafluorometer, piezoelectric d33 meter, wire-bonder, and laser displacement meter.

Layered Solids Laboratory
This laboratory contains a vacuum hot-press; creep testers, Ar-atmosphere glove-box, high-speed saw, and assorted high temperature furnaces; metallographic preparation facilities; high temperature closed-loop servo-hydraulic testing machines.

Mechanical Testing Laboratory
This laboratory contains mechanical and closed-loop servo-hydraulic testing machines, hardness testers, Charpy and Izod impact testers, equipment for fatigue testing, metallographic preparation facilities and a rolling mill with twin 6" diameter rolls.

Macromolecular Materials Laboratory
This laboratory contains a hybrid rheometer, inert environment glove box, size exclusion chromatography with multi-angle laser light scattering, HPLC and RI detector & MALS, centrifuge, rotovapor, and vacuum oven used for developing innovative synthetic platforms to generate functional soft materials with complex macromolecular architectures.

Mesoscale Materials Laboratory
This laboratory contains instrumentation for growth, characterization, device fabrication, and design and simulation of electronic, dielectric, ferroelectric and photonic materials. Resources include physical and chemical vapor deposition and thermal and plasma processing of thin films, including oxides and metals, and semiconductor nanowire growth. Facilities include pulsed laser deposition, atomic layer deposition (ALD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), sublimation growth, and resistive thermal evaporation.  Variable-temperature high-vacuum probe station and optical cryostats including high magnetic field, fixed and tunable-wavelength laser sources, several monochromators for luminescence and Raman scattering spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy with electron beam lithography, and a scanning probe microscope.

Nanomaterials Laboratory
This laboratory contains instrumentation for synthesizing, testing and manipulation of nanomaterials carbon and two dimensional carbides under microscope, high-temperature autoclaves, Sievert’s apparatus; glove-boxes; high-temperature vacuum and other furnaces for the synthesis of nano-carbon coatings and nanotubes; tube furnaces for synthesis of carbides and nitrides; potentiostat/galvanostat for electrochemical testings; ultraviolet-visible (UV-VIS) spectrophotometry; Raman spectrometers; Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) up to 1500 °C with mass spectrometer, Zeta potential analyzer; attrition mill, bath and probe sonicators, centrifuges; electro-spinning system for producing nano-fibers.

Functional Inorganic Materials Synthesis Laboratory
The laboratory contains equipment for the synthesis of inorganic and hybrid materials, including gas cabinets for NH₃ and H₂, a CVD furnace, and spin-coater; UV-Vis spectrophotometer; and a photodegradation test station with Xe 1000 W lamp.   

Films and Heterostructures Laboratory
This laboratory contains an oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) thin film deposition system; physical properties measurement system (PPMS) for electronic transport and magnetometry measurements from 2 to 400 K, up to 9 T fields; 2 tube furnaces; spectroscopic ellipsometer.

Powder Processing Laboratory
This laboratory contains vee blenders, ball-mills, sieve shaker + sieves for powder classification, several furnaces. 

Soft Matter Research and Polymer Processing Laboratories
These laboratories contain computerized thermal analysis facilities including differential scanning calorimeters (DSC), dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMA) and thermo-gravimetric analyzer (TGA); tabletop tensile tester; strip biaxial tensile tester; vacuum evaporator; spin coater; centrifuge; optical microscope with hot stage; liquid crystal tester; microbalance; ultrasonic cleaner; laser holographic fabrication system; polymer injection molder and single screw extruder.

Natural Polymers and Photonics Laboratory
This laboratory contains a high purity liquid chromatography (HPLC) system; refractometer; electro-spinning and touch-spinning systems for producing nanofibers.

X-ray Tomography Laboratory
This laboratory contains a high resolution X-ray micro-tomography instrument and a cluster of computers for 3D microstructure reconstruction; mechanical stage, a positioning stage and a cryostage for in-situ testing.

MSE Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory
Contains an FTIR spectrometer, metallographic sample preparation, equipment, polymer 3D printers, polymer extruder and injection molder, Vickers hardness tester, inverted metallograph, multiple  furnaces.

Materials Characterization Core (MCC)
The Department of Materials Science & Engineering relies on the Materials Characterization Core facilities within the University for materials characterization and micro- and nano-fabrication. These facilities contain a number of state-of-the-art materials characterization instruments, including high resolution and variable pressure field-emission scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) with Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) for elemental analysis, Orientation Image Microscopy (OIM) for texture analysis, various in-situ and in-operando stages (cryo mat, heating, tensile, 3- and 4-point bending, and electrochemistry); two Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEMs) with STEM capability and TEM sample preparation equipment; a dual-beam focused ion beam (FIB) system for nano-characterization and nano fabrication; a Nanoindenter; an X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS)/Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis (ESCA) system; X-Ray Diffractometers (XRD); and an X-ray microscope (NanoCT) with an in-situ tensile/compression temperature controlled stage.

More details of these instruments, information on how to access them, and instrument usage rates can be found at Drexel University’s Materials Characterization Core webpage.