All you want to know about negative thermal expansion materials in an easy to read condensed format. In everyday life, minute thermally-induced elongations are essentially invisible to the naked eye; but even minute expansions can fatally degrade device processing and performance in - for example - the semiconductor industry. Materials which, astonishingly, contract upon heating offer the great advantage of being able to tune the overall thermal expansion of composite materials or to act as thermal-expansion compensators. The development of these negative thermal expansion materials has advanced rapidly during the past fifteen years, and a wide variety of materials of differing types has now been identified, as well as a number of intriguing mechanisms which help to avoid the apparent inviolable tendency of size to increase with temperature. The present work is the most up-to-date summary of the current range of negative thermal expansion materials and of the associated mechanisms.

David Fisher was born in England in 1936 and emigrated to Canada in 1958. He has had a deep and on-going interest in communication and language since 1966 when he worked with Inuit on Baffin Island. He attended university in the 1970's and 80's and was granted degrees in Social Work and a Ph.D. in Psychology. He has studied the inter-relatedness of language, personality, relationships and spirituality since 1981.
He continues to provide counseling to individuals and couples and lead a small meditation group. On most days he manages to do at least some gardening. He lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia. He and his former wife, Kyra, have two children, Petra and Adrian. David and Kyra maintain a warm friendship.