Knowledge Transfer to Industry and Other Sectors
We focus here on collaborative activities with industry associated with research work in the IRGs.
GM/Brown Collaborative Research Laboratory in Computational Materials Science
The laboratory for computational materials research at Brown University is one of several collaborative research laboratories established worldwide by General Motors to accelerate the pace of innovation in strategic technology areas. The goal of the GM/Brown laboratory is to develop computer simulations that predict the mechanical properties of materials used in automotive applications, and to use these simulations to help General Motors to develop materials with enhanced performance. The computations are guided and verified by experiments. The laboratory has three focus areas: (i) Development of aluminum alloys with enhanced room temperature formability; (ii) Hot forming of magnesium and aluminum alloys; and (iii) Engineered surfaces with improved wear resistance and friction.
The laboratory involves an inter-disciplinary team of physicists, engineers and materials scientists, including eight staff members from GM and Bower, Kumar, Kim, Curtin, and Sheldon. GM researchers and Brown faculty collaborate closely, with faculty, students and research associates often spending summer months at the GM R&D center in Warren, MI, and with GM staff members spending extended periods at Brown. The GM/Brown Laboratory does not directly support MRSEC, but is a paying user of shared central facilities, including the Computational Mechanics Research Facility and the Microscopy Facility. In addition, computational or experimental techniques developed as part of MRSEC research are often applied to projects in the CRL; and vice-versa. For example, front-tracking finite element methods originally developed to model island nucleation and growth in the MRSEC are now being used to model microstructure evolution during metal forming for General Motors. Similarly, techniques developed for controlling stress in thin diamond films as part of MRSEC are now being used to optimize wear resistant diamond coatings for GM.
KIST: Korea Institute of Science and Technology; SNU: Seoul National University
K.S. Kim is the main collaborator with KIST and this collaboration is composed of two parts. One is for high performance computing on mechanics of nano and micro structures. The other is for advanced multiscale experiments on mechanics of nano and micro structures. KIST provides supercomputing capabilities with 1024 CPU for ab initio DFT and MD simulations. It provides additional 3096 CPU for vastly parallel computing as needed. KIST also furnishes fabrication facilities for surface nano and micro structures. Brown provides analytical multi-scale modeling as well as advanced characterization experiments. SNU collaborates in primarily DFT simulations and advance quantum mechanical simulations for computational design of nanostructures. For this collaboration, investigations on dynamic compressive fracture processes of single wall nanotubes in ultrasonication have been carried out with vastly parallel MD simulations. Also nano tribology of reptile skin friction has been investigated experimentally as well as analytical modeling. Currently ab initio calculations on nanostructural behavior of CIGS solar cell surface nanostructures and associated experiments are under way. For this collaboration, KIST is providing approximately $2M ($1M to Brown and $1M to SNU) for next five years – half of them through supercomputing budget and nanofabrication budget. In addition, they send a post doc every year for this collaboration.
Sandia National Lab
Sheldon’s work on intrinsic stress evolution includes an experimental collaboration with Dr. Sean Hearne at Sandia National Lab. This is largely based on a lithographic technique developed by Hearne; that makes it possible to electrodeposit islands with uniform size and spacing. This has allowed us to conduct in situ stress studies with systematic variations in the island size. A graduate student, Sumit Soni, spent the summer of 2008 working on this project with Hearne at Sandia. Sandia supported both the stipend and the full travel costs for the student
during this time period.
EMC continues to collaborate on understanding the fundamentals of Sn whisker formation with Chason and Kumar. As the number of parts manufactured with Pb-free Sn coatings increases, EMC is concerned about knowing which structures are most susceptible to whisker-based failures. They support part of the experimental MRSEC effort by the purchase of supplies and equipment and providing samples and technical expertise. As part of this collaboration, we have monitored stress, intermetallic formation and whisker growth in coatings that had been treated using several different industry-wide practices (i.e., as-coated, annealing after coating and reflow of the coating). This work enables us to quantify the effect of the different post-deposition treatments on the IMC morphology and whisker kinetics. The results are currently being put into a manuscript for submission to a technical journal. In addition to the experimental work, the results of the FEM model developed by Bower and students will be shared with EMC staff to understand how these predictions of stress evolution relate to the whisker growth.
Oak Ridge National Lab
In addition to EMC, Chason, Kumar and Bower are also collaborating with researchers from Oak Ridge National Lab and the APS Synhchrotron at Argonne to measure the evolution of stress in Sn coatings as the intermetallic grows. This work takes advantage of the microbeam capabilities they have developed for measuring stress distributions with sub-micron resolution.
IBM / Brookhaven National Lab
IBM is collaborating with Chason on using his process for growing large-area single crystal foils as potential substrates for photovoltaic systems and for growth of graphene. The foils are created using electrochemical deposition and etching in a process that was first developed with MRSEC funding. This work has also lead to a collaboration with Peter Sutter at Brookhaven National Lab for studying the growth of semiconductors and graphene on the single crystal metal foils. The collaboration has been chosen as one of the user projects of the BNL nanocenter.