Many macroscopic properties of materials are determined primarily by inhomogeneous structures and textures. These intermediate-scale structures often arise from competing interactions operating on different length scales within the material. Our understanding of such phenomena has increased substantially with the identification and theoretical description of solid-state materials with incommensurate and long-period modulated phases, such as ferroelectrics, charge-density-wave compounds, epitaxial layers and polytypes. Experimental diagnosis of inhomogeneous ground states and metastable phases has advanced so far that these are now well-accepted phenomena. These proceedings bring together the work of physicists and materials scientists to review developments in this area and to examine possible future directions, such as how the microscopic understanding emerging in bench-top solid-state systems can be applied in materials science.

Inhalt

I Introductory Surveys.- The Microscopic Understanding of Modulated Structures and Polytypes.- Electron Microscopy of Static and Dynamic Phenomena.- Some Problems for Physicists in First Order Diffusional Phase Transformations in Crystalline Solids.- Competing Displacive Interactions, Phonon Anomalies, and Structural Transitions Which Do Not "Soften".- II Statics.- Competing Interactions and the Origins of Polytypism.- On the Systematics of Phase Transformations in Metallic Alloys.- Neutron and X-Ray Scattering Studies of Premartensitic Phenomena.- Statics and Dynamics of Twin Boundaries in Martensites.- The Frenkel-Kontorova Model with Nonconvex Interparticle Interactions.- Cu3Pd Observed by High-Voltage Electron Microscopy.- Existence and Formation of LPAPB Structures in Pt3V Studied Using High Resolution Electron Microscopy..- Dense Packings of Hard Spheres.- Competing Interactions in Metallic Superlattices.- Quasi-Two-Dimensional Phase Transitions in Graphite Intercalation Compounds.- Structure and Modeling of 2D Alkali Liquids in Graphite.- Microstructures of Rare-Gas Films Adsorbed on Graphite: Classical and Quantum Simulations.- New Theory for Competing Interactions and Microstructures in Partially Ordered (Liquid-Crystalline) Phases.- III Dynamics.- Defects, Hysteresis and Memory Effects in Modulated Systems.- Competing Interactions: Charge Density Waves and Impurities.- Dynamical Excitations of Site-Diluted Magnets.- Random Field Effects in Dilute Antiferromagnets.- Spin Glasses.- Neural Networks: A Tutorial.- Ordering Kinetics in Quasi-One-Dimensional Systems and Polymer Melts.- Effects of Impurities on Domain Growth.- to Growth Oscillations.- Index of Contributors.