Collaborative Research: Design and Advanced Manufacturing of Hexaboride High Entropy Ceramics

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New materials and processes are needed to address needs found in extreme environments, such as nuclear reactors, near space (in the vicinity of Earth), and deep space. These materials would be used in structural support, shielding, and detectors. This research pursues fundamental research to provide the needed knowledge for the development and manufacturing of a new class of multicomponent materials, called high entropy ceramics, High entropy ceramics have properties which are tunable through the choice of composition and they require a new approach to their synthesis and manufacturing. Isotopically enriched, multicomponent hexaboride materials, as a member of this new class of ceramics, will be studied in an alternative approach to achieve high performance, complex neutron detectors needed for national security and medical and nuclear technologies, fostering national prosperity. Forming such complex materials presents a unique opportunity for the development of new ceramics and methods of high-throughput advanced manufacturing and multi-scale modeling of hexaborides. The educational impact includes involvement with the Native American and Hispanic communities including cross-border collaborations.This comprehensive project looks to design and manufacture new high-entropy, 10B-enriched, hexaborides for applications in radiation detection, with a special focus on the detection of thermal, epithermal and slow neutrons. The work focusses on the discovery of new high-entropy hexaboride materials and the synthetic processes to make these multi-component materials without phase separation. The multicomponent materials will be tuned through composition, guided by computation, altering the band gap of the material. The unique aspects of this project are: (1) this will be the first study that will design and manufacture high-entropy hexaboride ceramics, opening the door to the concept of band gap engineering in these unique materials, and their potential for use in extreme environments, and (2) this will be the first study that will combine the use of multi-scale modeling techniques for the design and manufacturing of high-entropy hexaboride materials, with a special focus on the determination of electronic structure, neutron response and defect burden, as well as grain boundary effects and interphases, on the electronic properties of the materials.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.