Preface to Special Topic: Instruments and methods for combinatorial science and high-throughput screening

The field of combinatorial research continues to expand
into new application areas and material types as researchers
and organizations witness the impact that combinatorial
methods are having in the marketplace and scientific literature.
Combinatorial science concentrates on the ability to
synthesize, formulate, and analyze new materials and material
combinations. When coupled with highly parallel measurement
techniques as well as rapid data reduction and
analysis, combinatorial approaches are providing the ability
to rapidly discover synergies amongst multiple ingredients
that are simply not possible to discover using traditional
techniques. Beyond materials discovery, combinatorial methods
continue to yield fundamental insight into physical processes
and phenomena such as adhesion, wetting, self-assembly,
conductivity, and luminescence.