20th Century
- 1902 – Synthetic rubies created by the Verneuil process developed by Auguste Verneuil
- 1908 - Cellophane invented by Jacques E. Brandenberger
- 1909 – Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic presented by Leo Baekeland
- 1911 – Superconductivity discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
- 1912 – Stainless steel invented by Harry Brearley
- 1916 – Method for growing single crystals of metals invented by Jan Czochralski
- 1924 – Pyrex invented by scientists at Corning Incorporated, a glass with a very low coefficient of thermal expansion
- 1931 – synthetic rubber called neoprene developed by Julius Nieuwland (see also: E.K. Bolton, Wallace Carothers)
- 1931 – Nylon developed by Wallace Carothers
- 1938 – The process for making poly-tetrafluoroethylene, better known as Teflon discovered by Roy Plunkett
- 1939 – Dislocations in metals confirmed by Robert W. Cahn
- 1947 – First germanium point-contact transistor invented
- 1947 – First commercial application of a piezoelectric ceramic: barium titanate used as a phonograph pickup
- 1951 – Individual atoms seen for the first time using the field ion microscope
- 1953 – Metallic catalysts which greatly improve the strength of polyethylene polymers discovered by Karl Ziegler
- 1954 – Silicon solar cells with 6% efficiency made at Bell Laboratories
- 1954 – Argon oxygen decarburization (AOD) refining invented by scientists at the Union Carbide Corporation
- 1959 – Float glass process patented by the Pilkington Brothers
- 1962 – SQUID superconducting quantum interference device invented
- 1968 – Liquid crystal display developed by RCA
- 1970 – Silica optical fibers grown by Corning Incorporated
- 1980 – Duplex stainless steels developed which resist oxidation in chlorides
- 1985 - The first fullerene molecule discovered by scientists at Rice University (see also: Timeline of carbon nanotubes)
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Materials Technology, 2nd Millennium