IRES: US-Australia Collaboration on a Fundamental Approach to Generating New Classes of Lightweight, High Performance,High Entropy Alloys

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Through this International Research Experiences for Students award, Harvey Mudd College (HMC) undergraduate students will participate in an ongoing collaboration with researchers in the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Electron Microscope Unit at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. Principal investigator Lori Bassman and lead UNSW collaborators Dr. Kevin Laws and Professor Michael Ferry will develop project directions for year-round research by participating students (four per year), with 10 week visits by the students and PI to UNSW each year. At UNSW the students will have extensive access to physical metallurgy laboratories, microscope facilities, training, and discipline-specific expertise unavailable at HMC. Through the collaboration, HMC students will develop novel metallic high entropy alloys (HEAs) with mechanical properties greatly exceeding those of conventional engineering metals. Unlike traditional alloys that have one primary constituent element, HEAs have five or more elements in roughly equiatomic proportions. HEAs have excellent potential in a vast range of applications, from making lighter-weight, high-strength structures to usage in high temperature applications to forming coatings for high wear or corrosive environments. Given their complexity, the range of possible alloys to be developed is as extensive as the periodic table itself, with tremendous promise for tailoring material properties for a great many different applications. The mechanisms by which these complex alloys are formed and improved properties are achieved are not well understood. The central goal of this project is to develop a fundamental approach for predicting compositions that form stable metallic solid solutions. This approach will be used to generate new classes of alloys with application-specific properties. The specific projects to be performed by HMC undergraduates will focus on alloy development, fabrication, mechanical characterization and microstructural characterization, as well as computational modeling of alloy structures. An experimentally validated, systematic model based on first-principles calculations will enable efficient development of further HEA systems.This project will contribute to the maturation of undergraduate students into confident, enthusiastic researchers who are prepared for science and engineering careers in international research environments.