There are a lot of materials with various properties, such as hard, soft, ductile, and brittle. What causes such differences in the features of the materials? You can reveal the reasons when you observe the inside of materials with microscopes. The six images shown below are micrographs of materials with different properties, which are observed by a transmission electron microscope. You can find that the materials with different properties have different patterns. These patterns are called "microstructure" of the materials, whose size is as small as 1/100  1/100,000 of the diameter of a hair, about 0.1 mm. The microstructure determines the properties of the material. In order to control the microstructures, it is necessary to adjust the composition of material precisely and to perform optimal heat treatments and deformation processing. To adjust it and perform them properly, you should understand how the microstructure in the material forms and why it differs from material to material. In our laboratory, we elucidate the formation processes of the microstructure in various materials and establish controlling methods to develop functional materials that can be used as structural materials for aircraft and automobiles, and as biomaterials for artificial bone.

• Research and development of materials for biomedical applications with high biocompatibility
• Research and development of structural metallic materials for automobile and aircraft