Term: material stability https://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook.08027 Definition: Constancy of a property of a material over time. Notes: 1) A material is said to be stable with respect to a specified property if its measured or examined property value does not fall outside a specified interval during storage under specified conditions over a specified period of time. 2) A reference material is assessed for the stability of an embodied property under conditions of transport ("short-term stability") and storage ("long-term stability"). 3) The variation of the property value over time adds a contribution to the uncertainty budget or the examination uncertainty, as applicable. Regarding the assessment of stability of the reference material, detailed guidance is given in ISO Guide 35. 4) The term "stability" is also used for stability of a measuring instrument or process (see control limit). Link: Related Term: control limit (http://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook.08069). Source: PAC, 2021, 93, 997. 'Metrological and quality concepts in analytical chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 2021)' on page 1009 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2019-0819) Citation: 'material stability' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook.08027 License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.