Materials are the key to processes, performance, and cost. Throughout the millennia, some materials have been highly valued for beauty, others for their rarity, and still others because of alleged magical properties. Even today, materials can determine the power and rank of nations in the world order. While natural resources have brought wealth and a certain measure of power to nations, it is the synthesized and manufactured materials that create true wealth and confer power on nations, companies, and people. Electronics, probably to a greater degree than any industry, has created great prosperity and extraordinary technology by the brilliant manipulation of common materials into those that are exotic, with properties not found in nature. Sand and common metals are turned into chips worth millions of times more than the raw materials because they contain hundreds of millions of nanoscale parts that can do the mental tasks of thousands of people in a fraction of the time. Component packaging also relies on manufactured materials with properties that have been crafted and tuned over decades, and also from well-known elements like aluminum, carbon, copper, nickel, oxygen, and gold. It is the material that sets the limits on performance and ultimately defines the cost of the product and the markets that are available. We will look at the packaging materials with emphasis on those that are suited for MEMS and MOEMS.