Development of Modern Fundamental Materials Science at the Faculty of Materials Science of the Moscow State University

The key families of modern materials and the evolution of promising materials research trends, which has entered an active phase in the 1990s, are reviewed. It is noted that the classical approaches to materials engineering centered on revealing and utilizing correlations between the composition, the structure, and the properties should be complemented by a thorough analysis of the actual structure and the structure-sensitive characteristics of materials; careful consideration of the synergy of external effects in material synthesis and the possibilities provided by template synthesis, self-assembly, and self-organization in nanomaterials engineering; and the examination of response of living systems to biomaterials. Being highly interdisciplinary, fundamental materials science borrows heavily from modern inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, and solid-state chemistry, which invariably guide the development trends in materials science.