A unified view of materials design: Two-element principle

Abstract Four elements of materials science and engineering (namely synthesis/processing, structure/composition, properties, and performance) should be systematically and holistically considered to give a unified view of a material being designed, but no effective mathematic methods have been derived to connect these four elements together to derive an integrated view so far. Multi-scale and closed-loop materials design cannot be described just only based on this unified view. A new materials design principle based on two basic elements, namely environment and microstructure, has been put forward to describe above two difficult problems, multi-scale and closed-loop materials design. A new concept of “order” thereby has been deduced to quantitatively define the procedures of materials design.