NIST’s FiPy software, available on MatForge, models the “superfill” (superconformal electrodeposition) process.

The NSDL Materials Digital Library (MatDL.org) Pathway started MatForge to provide an online work space where scientists can collaborate. MatDL intends to use the results of those collaborations as library resources, says Principal Investigator Laura Bartolo. MatForge also gives materials scientists better ways to connect with computational materials science resources, a key objective of the National Science Foundation.

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationship between the structure of materials and their properties. It originates from metallurgy, ceramics and polymer science and has important associations to physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, geology, electronics, optics, and biology. The field brings together key areas of interest in academics and government, including areas of great promise such as nanoscience, so collaboration is essential. Places like MatForge make collaboration easier.

MatForge started in August 2006 when the Materials Science and Engineering Lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology , a MatDL partner, posted software they had developed to put in the public domain. “FiPy” is an object oriented, partial differential equation (PDE) solver, written in Python and based on a standard finite volume (FV) approach. MatForge uses open source software that allows materials scientists to collaborate on different versions of modeling and simulation software without losing or erasing anything. Several government and academic materials science labs are now regular contributors to the site.

“MatForge also gives the materials community access to these research codes,” says Bartolo. Materials scientists at Purdue are now using research codes borrowed from MatForge, like FiPy, as teaching tools in their classes. “This is the kind of interaction between research and education we’re trying to encourage,” she says. “The NSF has made it a priority to integrate computational science into different domains, and MatForge supports that goal.”

MatDL is the NSDL Pathway for materials science study and teaching. Its collections are of interest to students of engineering, physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, soft matter, and nanoscience.