Welcome to the Charpagne research group at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
Research statement: “metastable alloys by design”
Metal Additive Manufacturing is revolutionizing the way we conceptualize materials synthesis, performance, and life cycle. One may think of physical metallurgy as an established and mature field, but what if we told you that out of 5,000 commercially available alloys, only a handful are printable? This arises from the extreme heating and cooling rates associated with additive manufacturing, which lead to microstructures that are far from thermodynamic equilibrium. In our group, we leverage these unique aspects of additive manufacturing as a strength to re-think how to design new alloys dynamically, out-of-equilibrium. Our materials are in metastable states that would never be achievable via conventional processing, and lead to unique combinations of mechanical and environmental properties. Our research sees direct applications in the fields of aerospace (space, rocket engines, hypersonics), biomaterials (implants), energy production (radiation tolerance), energy storage (hydrogen), and thermal management (surface functionalization).
As a graduate student in our group, you can expect to get hands-on experience in alloy synthesis using our Directed Energy Deposition (DED) Additive Manufacturing (AM) system, arc-melting, and solid state processing. You will operate SEMs, FIBs, TEMs, mechanical testing frames, and nano-indenters. More importantly, you will develop your own testing procedures, sample fabrication techniques, and custom data post-processing routines. If you are a hands-on person who likes experimental work, you will enjoy working in our lab. As we move towards incorporating more and more machine learning / statistical analysis into our research, basic coding skills (python preferred) are a huge plus.
We seek to maintain a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, which we believe is the right environment to see scientific ideas come to life. Stop by our offices to see for yourself!
Check out our Research page for open positions and current projects.
We gratefully acknowledge our funding sources:
and generous gifts from:
