<p>Say if I want to create a new type of metal, or discover a new metal element. Would a PhD in chemistry or materials science suit me better for these types of goals? I'm still having trouble discerning the main differences between chem and matsci; they both seem very similar in respects to the type of work I'd like to do, unless either one has some sort of field restriction that I'd hit whilst doing research.</p>
<p>The basic difference, in my experience, is how they approach a problem and what sorts of materials they tend to work with. I’m in a MSE PhD program now. There’s a pretty heavy overlap where we have chem undergrads in our department working for MSE professors, and we have MSE grads working for Chem professors (same thing with physics). Materials tends to focus a little more on metals, ceramics, and polymers and what you can do with their intrinsic structure, while chemists, in my experience, tend to work more with looking at individual molecules on the surface of your material and the things you can do with those individual molecules.</p>
<p>That said, those things vary from program to program and person to person.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in metallurgy, though, then materials science is totally the way to go. I work on bulk metallic glass composites, which are an entirely new class of metals and hadn’t even been around for five years when I started my PhD. :)</p>