Title:

Radiation Effects in Solids: Challenges and Opportunities to Material Scientists

Speaker:

Dr. Lumin Wang

Affiliation:

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

When:

Thursday, April 4, 2024 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Boggs Building, Room 3-47

Host:

Fan Zhang
fan.zhang@me.gatech.edu

Abstract

Materials used in radiation environments (e.g., in the core of nuclear reactors, semiconductor devices used in spacecrafts, high-level nuclear waste forms, as well as isotope-decay based nuclear batteries) are subject to the bombardment of energetic particles. The interactions of energetic particles with the nucleus and/or electrons of atoms in the crystalline solids create lattice defects and defect clusters. The evolutions of those defects modify the microstructure and determines the performance of the material, such as dimensional stability, mechanical and electrical properties. In fact, radiation damage is one of the top hurdles that must be overcome for the life-extension of existing fission reactor components and for the realization of future nuclear fusion reactors. In this talk, the author tries to summarize his ~40 years of experience on the study of radiation effects with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to outline the challenges and opportunities that the previous results bring to the material scientists in the nuclear engineering community. Mechanisms for mitigating radiation damage with chemical and/or microstructural modifications, including the use dispersed secondary phase nanoparticles and high entropy alloys, will be discussed. Examples of using radiation effects to create unique nanostructure patterns will also be presented. These nanostructure patterns may have special properties for technological applications.

Biography

Lumin wang is a professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (NERS) with a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He received his undergraduate education at Beijing University of Technology before coming to the US for graduate study in 1982. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He then worked at Argonne National Laboratory as a post-doctoral fellow in 1989, and at the University of New Mexico as a research scientist and the TEM laboratory manager in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences during 1990 and 1997. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in July 1997. He was promoted to the rank of a full professor in January 2005 and served as the Director of the Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory (EMAL), a campus-wide user facility, during 2005 to 2010. His research interests include the study of radiation effects in solids with TEM, the development of advanced nuclear waste forms and radiation tolerant materials, and ion beam modification of materials. He has published extensively in these research fields

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