Library Guides: Materials Science & Engineering Research Guide: Property Data & Phase Diagrams

How to find property data and phase diagrams

Here are some resources to get you started in your search for material property information. Many of these resources are or include searchable versions of important handbooks. They are available to Iowa State affiliates and may require a login or be restricted to on-campus use. For more help, contact your librarian.

Property data

ICSD: Inorganic Crystal Structure Database This link opens in a new window
Explore structure data and bibliographic information for more than 240,000 crystal structures.
Knovel e-book collection This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference books in engineering and chemistry. Includes Knovel Critical Tables, extensive material property data, and interactive equations, charts, and tables.
Knovel e-book collection tutorial
Please note that for members of the public visiting Parks Library, this resource is only available from a Parks Library workstation, and not from a mobile device connected to the campus wireless network:
SciFinderⁿ This link opens in a new window
Contains information about chemistry resources including articles, patents, protocols, proceedings, structures, and reactions.
SciFinder tutorial
Please note that this resource is not available to members of the public visiting Parks Library.
Springer Materials This link opens in a new window
Physical and chemical data for various materials, drawn from the Landolt-Bornstein New Series, the Linus Pauling Files, and specialized databases on thermophysical properties, polymer thermodynamics, adsorption isotherms, and 32,000+ substance profiles.
Springer Materials tutorial

Powder Diffraction File (PDF-4+)
The PDF contains 815,000+ unique material data sets. Each data set contains diffraction, crystallographic and bibliographic data, as well as experimental, instrument and sampling conditions, and select physical properties in a common standardized format. This database is only available in the Parks Library Media Center (Lower Level).

Phase diagrams

Alloy Phase Diagram Database This link opens in a new window
Search and view thousands of binary and ternary phase diagrams and associated phase data for inorganic systems.
Phase Equilibria Diagrams Database This link opens in a new window
Access thousands of phase diagrams with commentaries for inorganic compounds (ceramics and glasses). Published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and The American Ceramic Society (ACerS).

Free / open data sources

The following Open Access resources are available to anyone at no cost to the user.

ChemSpider
ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database providing access to over 57 million structures, properties, and associated information. It is owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Materials Project
Materials Project provides open web-based access to computed information on known and predicted materials as well as powerful analysis tools to inspire and design novel materials.

MatWeb This link opens in a new window
Material property data for thermoplastic and thermoset polymers; metals and alloys; ceramics; plus semiconductors, fibers, and other engineering materials.
MatWeb tutorial

NIST Chemistry WebBook
Collection of data on chemicals gathered by the National Institute of Science and Technology. The dataset is searchable by chemical names, formulas, CAS registry number, structures, and various physical properties of chemicals
NREL Data: High Throughput Experimental Materials Database
The mission of the High Throughput Experimental Materials Database (HTEM DB) is to enable discovery of new materials with useful properties by releasing large amounts of high-quality experimental data to public. The HTEM DB contains information about materials obtained from high-throughput experiments at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Thermodex: an Index of Selected Thermodynamic Data Handbooks
From the Mallet Chemistry Library, University of Texas at Austin. A searchable index of selected thermodynamic data handbooks.

Other Sources

Our print book collection includes many books containing phase diagrams and property information for a wide variety of materials that are not available online. Many of these books can be found in our Reference collection on Tier 2 or in the Standards Center (Room 161). For more information or assistance, contact your librarian.

Use the links below to search our print collection and the collections of other libraries, and use the Interlibrary Loan link to request items that are not in our collection.