Preface

Structural and chemical disorder are part of almost any engineering material. Their detailed characterization with theoretical and experimental approaches therefore forms the cornerstone of modern materials science and engineering. To assess the state of this field, the Workshop on Thermodynamic and Structural Properties of Alloy Materials was held on 20-24 June 1999 at the Sonesta Hotel in Oranjestad, Aruba. The workshop brought together experimentalists and theorists in the fields of metals, oxides and semiconductors. Particular emphasis was placed on efforts to transfer the success of first-principles modelling of configurational disorder to topological disorder, as occurs in metallic glasses and liquids. Fittingly, the workshop was dedicated to Professor de Fontaine of the University of California at Berkeley, whose influence on the field of order-disorder reactions and first-principles phase diagram calculations has been of key importance to the development of the subject.