Abstract

Materials science has generally been associated with metallurgy, alloy, ceramics, composites, polymer science, fiber spinning, coating, thin film, industrial surfactants and block copolymer development. That is about to change. Materials science will also expand to discovery and fabrication of biological and molecular materials with diverse structures, functionalities and utilities. The advent of nanobiotechnology and nanotechnology accelerated this trend. Similar as construction of an intricate architectural structure, diverse and numerous structural motifs are used to assemble a sophisticated complex. Nature has selected, produced and evolved numerous molecular architectural motifs over billions of years for particular functions. These molecular motifs can now be used to build materials from the bottom up. Materials science will begin to harness nature’s enormous power to benefit other disciplines and society.