People – Bellon-Group

Pascal Bellon

Donald W. Hamer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering Building, 312d
bellon@illinois.edu
(217) 265-0284

Short Biography: After earning a PhD in Materials Science from University of Paris 6, France, Bellon worked during 7 years at CEA-Saclay, France, before joining the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 1996, where he was later promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2002 and Full Professor in 2009. He received an NSF career award in 1998 and awards from the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education from the University of Illinois in 1998, 1999 and 2000. He received the Don Burnett teaching award in 2000, the Accenture Engineering council award for Excellence in Advising in 2007 and the Stanley Pierce award in 2009. He was named a Racheff faculty scholar in 2012, and was inducted as the Donald W. Hamer Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Illinois in 2016. Prof. Bellon served as interim head for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Illinois during 2019. His research focuses on materials driven into non-equilibrium states by external forcing such as irradiation by energetic particles and plastic deformation, in particular during powder processing and in tribological contacts, and on investigating how these driven systems can self-organize at the nanoscale and self-adapt to improve their performances in service.

Graduate students

Craig Daniels

daniel13@illinois.edu

Qun Li

qunli2@illinois.edu

My research focuses on self-organization of alloys subjected to severe external forces by both numerical simulation and experiment. My primary work, using phase-field modeling, is to study compositional patterning in irradiated binary alloys, specifically the kinetic evolution and steady-states of patterning, the coupling with defects such as grain boundaries. My early experimental work investigates the microstructural evolution of nanocomposite Cu-Nb-oxide precipitate during reactive ball-milling. In this work, phase characterization is performed by FIB, (S)TEM, EDS, EELS, etc. With a better understanding of alloys in far-from-equilibrium conditions, the development of new materials will be able to advance more by design.

Soumyajit Jana

sjana3@illinois.edu

Sourav Das

sourav2@illinois.edu

I am a third-year graduate student pursuing Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering. My research heavily focuses on experimental techniques to study and understand phase and microstructure evolution of alloys subjected to driven conditions such as radiation. Using state-of-the-art nano-characterization facilities such as FIB-SEM, S-TEM, APT at the central research facilities of the MRL, I am currently studying irradiation effects on Al-based binary alloys, specifically focusing on the compositional pattering regime. Previously, during the pandemic I have also worked on some computational projects using molecular dynamics(MD) to investigate the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of driven systems and electron beam-based irradiation effects during in-situ mechanical testing of nanomaterials.

Sara K. Wonner

swonner2@illinois.edu

My current research is on the effects of radiation on 316L Stainless Steel, a structural material common to nuclear reactors. My project involves both computational and experimental aspects, and primarily pertains to studying radiation induced segregation (RIS) at both grain boundaries and dislocations. Experimentally, I utilize techniques such as FIB, EBSD, (S)TEM, and EDS to characterize my material’s microstructure and study RIS. Computationally, I conduct phase field modeling to simulate the evolution of point defects over time, at different temperature and irradiation conditions, with the overarching goal to model RIS.

Kenyi Choy Hernandez

kenyic2@illinois.edu

I joined the group in August 2021 as a first year PhD student. My present research focus entails developing a new class of Aluminum alloys suitable for additive manufacturing (AM). Aluminum has historically been difficult to manufacture using AM, and the few alloys that have been successfully developed are characterized by weaker mechanical properties. I will consider in this work new alloys and combinations, such as Al-(Fe,Ni,Cr) and Al-Sc, fabricated using selective laser melting, and subsequently characterized by complementary techniques including scanning and transmission electron microscopy, focused ion beam and atom probe tomography. As well, computational tools such as phase field modeling will be utilized to model solidification behavior and solid-phase transformations so as to guide the choice of the processing parameters. It is expected that an experimental and computational approach will help in optimizing the potential of AM.

Post-doctoral researchers

Gabriel-Frank Bouobda-Moladje

gf.bouobda@gmail.com

After obtaining my PhD at the University of Lille (France) in January 2020, I joined the group in August 2020 as a post-doctoral researcher. My thesis works were focused on phase-field (PF) modeling of irradiation damage, especially the computation of sink (dislocation, grain boundary, …) strengths including all elastic interactions as elasto-diffusion, and the prediction of the radiation induced segregation (RIS) phenomenon in binary alloys near dislocations while these last are moving through the climb mechanism. Irradiation-induced compositional patterning (CP) which means self-organization in the precipitate length scale is another common observed phenomenon in irradiated materials and is intensively studied in the group since several years. Starting from my knowledge about modeling microstructural defects, their interactions with point defects (PDs) and the coupling between PD and atom fluxes, my current research aim to study the establishment of CP, its coupling with PD sinks and PDs including the RIS phenomenon, in selected binary model alloys using PF approach.