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Advanced materials for energy applications are currently being developed with ultrafine, highly non-equilibrium microstructures, which can be tailored for specific applications, and they are often exposed to extreme environments.  My research program investigates the fundamental aspects of materials processes in such far from equilibrium conditions. It includes irradiation effects in metals and oxide ceramics, forced atomic mixing and phase formation during severe plastic deformation, the mechanical properties of nanocrystalline materials, and ultrafast dynamics in materials subjected to femtosecond laser irradiation. These various topics are studied using a combination of computer modeling and experimental methods.

The research on irradiation effects employs molecular dynamics and kinetic Monte Carlo methods at the atomic level and phase field modeling over longer length scales. The work on metals explores self-organization of nonequilibrium phases during high temperature irradiation in attempts to stabilize microstructures at the nanometer length scale, and under the extreme conditions expected for advanced future reactors. Specimens are irradiated in our laboratory using a 3.0 MeV Van de Graaff accelerator and characterized using a variety of advanced techniques: x-ray diffraction, atom probe tomography, and transmission electron microscopy. Our work on irradiated oxide ceramics has been examining the kinetic behavior of fission gas bubbles in UO2 fuels, their nucleation, growth and resolution in the matrix during irradiation. The research on metals subjected to severe plastic deformations examines predominantly phase formation and self-organization during ball milling, high pressure torsion or equal channel angular processing, and all at elevated temperatures. The aim is to develop new materials that are structured at the nanometer length scale, but which are stable at high temperatures. The mechanical properties of these new materials are studied as well. Again, we use both computer simulation and experiments to advance our research.  Lastly this research program examines the kinetics of melting and solidification in metals irradiated with femtosecond lasers in order to understand the basic mechanisms of phase transformations at far from equilibrium conditions.