Structure and Bonding in Crystalline Materials: A Textbook for Materials Science and Engineering Students

A textbook has been prepared for an entry level Materials Science and Engineering graduate course on structure and bonding in crystalline materials. The course is intended to serve as a foundation for other graduate courses by providing techniques to understand crystal structures and the cohesive forces that stabilize them. The intrinsically connected topics of structure and bonding are presented in the same course because without knowledge in both of these areas, it is not possible to address the fundamental relationship between the composition, structure, and properties of solid matter that motivates nearly all materials research. The purpose of this paper is to describe the rationale used during the development of the course and the textbook that has been prepared to assist Materials Science and Engineering students and instructors.