Scientific Events

Experiments and simulations in materials science and engineering often generate prodigious quantities of data. Extracting information from this data turns out to be more challenging than may at first appear, prompting efforts to create innovative ways of analyzing “big data.” I will provide an overview of my own adventure in data-driven materials research and focus in on a few methods and example applications that have proven to be especially productive. The first deals with the inference of failure criteria for individual microstructure features from databases of individual failure events. The second concerns mining and analysis of image data from the open literature to gain new insight into materials without performing any new experiments or simulations. I will conclude with some thoughts about the future of data-based methods in materials science and engineering. [more]

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This presentation provides an overview of research that has been (and is being) carried out at The University of Manchester, with a focus on the role that phase transformations play in the development of stress in steel welds. There are several motivations for this research. Residual stresses play a significant role in affecting the long-term structural performance of safety-critical components in many power plants. They can also contribute to the driving force for crack growth and, in nuclear environments, they can activate material degradation mechanisms such as creep and stress-corrosion cracking even in the absence of operating stresses. This is significant because many safety-critical components in a nuclear plant undergo welding during manufacture, and welding is known introduce substantial levels of residual stress. Solid-state phase transformations affect the development of stresses in steels because these transformations have associated strains, which in turn affect the development of stress upon heating and cooling. Residual stresses also tend to be limited by the yield stress of the material, so the mechanical properties of transformation products will have a direct bearing on the development of stress. Some of the topics that will be covered in this presentation include the development and assessment of low-transformation-temperature filler materials for the mitigation of residual stresses, assessments of the effects of particular welding processes on the development of stresses, work towards understanding the mechanisms contributing to the development of transformation strains, and the incorporation of phase transformation effects into finite-element models for the prediction of residual stresses in steel welds. [more]

Conventional high-resolution imaging by electron microscopy plays an important role in the structural and compositional analysis of catalysts. However, since the observations are generally performed under vacuum and close to room temperature, the obtained atomistic details concern an equilibrium state that is of limited value when the active state of a catalyst is in the focus of the investigation. Since the early attempts of Ruska in 1942 [1], in situ microscopy has demonstrated its potential and, with the recent availability of commercial tools and instruments, led to a shift of the focus from ultimate spatial resolution towards observation of relevant dynamics. During the last couple of years we have implemented commercially available sample holders for in situ studies of catalysts in their reactive state inside a transmission electron microscope. In order to relate local processes that occur on the nanometer scale with collective processes that involve fast movement of large numbers of atoms, we have adapted an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) for the investigation of surface dynamics on active catalysts. Using these two instruments, we are now able to cover a pressure range from 10^-4 to 10³ mbar and a spatial resolution ranging from the mm to the sub-nm scale. Presently we are investigating metal catalyzed CVD growth of graphene [2,3], as well as structural dynamics during oscillatory red-ox reactions on metal catalysts. The observations are performed in real-time and under conditions in which the active state of the catalyst can be monitored. The latter is of upmost importance, since the key requirement is to observe relevant processes and dynamics that are related to catalytic function. The ability to directly image the active catalyst and associated morphological changes at high spatial resolution enables us to refine the interpretation of spatially averaged spectroscopic data that was obtained under otherwise similar reaction conditions, for example during near-ambient-pressure in situ XPS measurements [4]. It will be shown that the ability of observing the adaption of an active surface to changes in the chemical potential of the surrounding gas phase in real-time potentially offers new and direct ways of optimizing catalysts and applied reaction conditions. References[1] E. Ruska, Kolloid-Zeitschrift, 100 (1942) 212-219[2] Z.-J. Wang et al., ACS Nano, 9 (2015) 1506–1519[3] Z.-J. Wang et al., Nat. Commun. 7 (2016) DOI:10.1038/ncomms13256[4] R. Blume et al., PhysChemChemPhys, 16 (2014) 25989 [more]

Publishing your research results is an integral – if not the most important – part of your research. In this talk, some insight in the publishing process at the inhouse editorial offices of the successful journal family of Advanced Materials will be given. I will clarify the workflow at a publishing house from the moment the manuscript arrives until it is published and emphasize the role of the editor in that process. In the second part, I concentrate specifically on the requirements for successful publication in our high-impact journals and explain our requirements for acceptable manuscripts in our journals – and which pit falls authors should avoid in the preparation and submission process. [more]

The Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH in Düsseldorf is organizing the 3rd NRW-APT user meeting on May 16^th 2017 and we would like to invite you and your research colleagues to participate in this event. This meeting will bring together scientists from North Rhine-Westphalia dealing with APT technique or correlating APT with other techniques. We want to discuss problems and share knowledge regarding sample preparation, measurement conditions, data reconstruction & analysis, etc. If you and your colleagues would like to attend this event, then please register before May 2nd 2017. There are limited places only. We are looking forward to see you in Düsseldorf! [more]

The workshop is part of our series of one-day workshops "Frontiers in Material Science & Engineering", where we bring together leading experts from academia and industry in a workshop format that allows in-depth discussions of fundamental and applied research in this area. Places are limited to 50 participants. The workshop participation is free-of-charge and is sponsored by the MPIE. [more]