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What is a typical day for a Material Engineer?
I don't know what Material Engineer really does. If someone can tell me that would be awesome. Thank you for answering my question.
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Daniel’s Answer
Hello Nathanial. Carmen's answer from experience working with Polymer Materials Engineers is very good. Materials Science & Engineering encompasses four major areas: Polymers, as Carmen noted, as well as Metallurgy, Ceramics, and Nanotechnology. You will find the work and working conditions of MatSE engineers can be very different depending on their area of study and expertise. Carmen's colleagues work in one area of Polymer Materials, but you could also find Polymer MatSE folks making the next generation of bullet proof vests, smart materials for clothing, sports equipment, or nanocarbon filaments. Metallurgists are going to be working to either create metal alloys or examining broken metal products to determine why they failed at the microscopic level. So they can be in a metal foundry working around high heat, or in a nice cool lab, peering through optical or electronic microscopes looking at crystal patterns. Ceramicists similarly will be working in the lab and around kilns to study, determine, and combine just the right combination of clay, glass, cement, carbides, oxides, nitrides to develop products like heat refracting tiles, thermal barriers, and advanced communications tools.
My son is a nanotechnology MatSE scientist who works for the National Science Foundation (NSF), funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), so I know this part from second hand experience. His week consists of three regular tasks and a fourth task which wraps up the other three.
1. Creating tiny multi-layer chips of purified elements and organic metals in large vacuum vessels.
2. Working in a clean room, creating microscopic devices that test the chips for properties needed for advanced computers.
3. Testing and measuring how the chips effect the movement of electrons through magnetic fields
4. Gathering, filtering, explaining, and writing up the results of the work of tasks 1-3 to create scientific papers that will be reviewed by peers in academia and industry. If there is enough interest, the papers will be published in scientific journals so that everyone in the field can learn from each others' work and advance the science and technology.
My son is a nanotechnology MatSE scientist who works for the National Science Foundation (NSF), funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), so I know this part from second hand experience. His week consists of three regular tasks and a fourth task which wraps up the other three.
1. Creating tiny multi-layer chips of purified elements and organic metals in large vacuum vessels.
2. Working in a clean room, creating microscopic devices that test the chips for properties needed for advanced computers.
3. Testing and measuring how the chips effect the movement of electrons through magnetic fields
4. Gathering, filtering, explaining, and writing up the results of the work of tasks 1-3 to create scientific papers that will be reviewed by peers in academia and industry. If there is enough interest, the papers will be published in scientific journals so that everyone in the field can learn from each others' work and advance the science and technology.
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Carmen’s Answer
Hello Nathaniel, I am a chemist but I work in the same group as several material engineers for a large Medical Device company. The materials engineers often have a specialty working with polymers such as silicones or working with metals such as stainless steel or titanium. They have extensive knowledge of the physical and mechanical properties of these materials. They may run tests to determine how strong the materials are under pressure or in-use conditions. As a chemist I work with the materials engineers to understand how drug formulations interact with the materials inside a drug infusion pump. It has been a very interesting and fun career.