"Offers a clear description of basic chemical principles and shows how to distinguish among the various major materials groups Includes a wealth of new topics and illustrative examples to aid in understanding of the information presented - Contains principles of materials synthesis and materials characterization methods Presents a descriptive, non-mathematical treatment of the fundamentals and applications in the field.Materials science as an interdisciplinary field between chemistry, physics and engineering has seen a dramatic expansion over the last decades, both in research efforts as well as in technology output. Specifically, materials chemistry, i.e., the part of materials science that deals with the atomic and molecular aspects of materials science, has become an integral part of materials science and chemistry curricula at essentially every university"--