Chemical Properties

There are five categories of energy stimuli that every material must respond to: mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical and optical. Beyond these five categories are many less important ones, and a more comprehensive list of material properties can be found here. An input of one or more of these energies will produce a change in the material’s composition or microstructure.

Chemical properties are arguably the most dynamic in relationship to the types of atomic and molecular bonding forces present in a material. There are many subheadings of these properties, but for this study, a material’s reactivity, valence and solubility are most important. All of these properties are directly related to and take place at the atomic and molecular level, and are resultant of how the bonding forces and structural forces react with those of another chemical/material/composition. Different bonding forces have different resistances, but in general, ionic bonding has the greatest susceptibility to solubility (chemical compounds such as NaCl2) in weaker solvents like water. Other the other hand, metallic bonding requires a more acidic solvent, such as HCl (hydrochloric acid) that is highly corrosive, to produce any chemical change.