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I am currently studying in the field of defect chemistry. This is mainly about atomic changes in solids, crystals, functional materials etc.

In my search for help, there don't seem to be any questions already asked in this topic. And I can't find fitting tags for my questions. Non-existing but relevant tags would be: defect-chemistry, vacancies, interstitials, impurities, dopants, acceptors, donors kröger-vink-notation etc.

Since this is all deep in the field of material science - but still very much described as chemical reactions - I am wondering if questions in the defect chemistry topic are not for this site but rather for a Material Science site (if such exists)?

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  • $\begingroup$ Nicolau has answered this perfectly, but we definitely encourage you to ask them here! $\endgroup$
    – jonsca
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 22:55

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I think defect chemistry is an excellent topic for Chemistry.SE! Don't be discouraged by the fact that there is little relevant content right now; that is entirely natural for any topic at some point of the site's development. You just came relatively early on!

The speed at which content for a field appears on Chem.SE is dependent on several factors, such as subject breadth, age of the field, general research/industrial/popular interest, knowledge base covered by the most active users, site traffic, and a fair amount of random luck. It's not hard to imagine that something such as defect chemistry will be a little less popular than, say, acid-base chemistry. However, at some point, even the latter subject had little content. It just has to add up with time.

So don't feel out of place! We apologize if we can't get you the answers you'd like, but that doesn't mean you should stop asking. Keep firing away, asking as much as you like. Even if the questions stay unanswered at first, you may well eventually attract other researchers in your field! We also encourage askers to answer their own questions whenever possible, so if you ever figure it out yourself, the internet at large would be very appreciative if you could share the knowledge you gained. You can be a Chem.SE pioneer!

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  • $\begingroup$ Pioneer, hu :) Thank you for a good answer to this doubt. I wasn't aware that the site is young; any material on any site naturally takes time to arrive. I will see what future brings. $\endgroup$
    – Steeven
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 21:23
  • $\begingroup$ In regard to new tags being added, is this a proces going on when specific topics are popular enough and "asked" enough? $\endgroup$
    – Steeven
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 21:24
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    $\begingroup$ Once you gain enough reputation (300), you can create new tags freely by simply adding them to any question's tags. Further reputation will provide more tagging powers. The community eventually adjusts to new tags, though at times some meta discussion is good to sort things out. $\endgroup$
    – Nicolau Saker Neto
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 21:37
  • $\begingroup$ For example, I (personally) think the first four of your example tags are good, though perhaps individually underpopulated, with the possible exception of impurities (maybe we can use defects as a catch-all synonym for the others, for now?). The fifth may be a bit too specific to warrant a tag just for itself. $\endgroup$
    – Nicolau Saker Neto
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 21:38
  • $\begingroup$ Ok. I agree: The last tag is too specific, yes. defects could include impurities, while a third good one would be dopants. This would include something like acceptors and donors, but I would say broad enough to be it's own tag. (I added those to the text.) $\endgroup$
    – Steeven
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 21:45
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I agree with Nicolau and jonsca, they are perfectly within our scope. Be the first to open up that can.

I unfortunately have no idea about this subject, there probably are a few questions about doping on the site which could fit the general description you gave. We currently have , which could be an intermediate tag, if you cannot create a new tag yet. (Either you wait until you can create it, but you can also ask some higher rep user in chat to create it for you.)

I would advise against donor/ acceptor, since they also have different meanings and could lead to some confusion, that might always have to be cleaned up. I see the same problem with impurities as this could lead to being used in conjunction with .
One of the most commonly wrongly applied tags is instead of for example. See the history of this question for a practical example. It would be better to avoid such confusions.

The choice defect-chemistry is probably the broadest it can get and might need a good tag wiki to define the scope. Instead on interstitials I would recommend interstitial-compounds, parallel to , , , etc.. And I think that would be a very good choice as a tag.
Also a good choice would probably dopants and I guess, you could already find a few questions to give this tag some scope.

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