CAREER: Leading to Accelerated Discoveries in High-Throughput Ultrafast Laser-Driven Processing of High Entropy Alloy Nanoparticles

该学院早期职业发展(CALEAR)奖支持基础研究，使高熵合金纳米粒子(HEA NPs)的高通量创造成为可能。HEA NPs是多种元素(通常是五个或更多)在纳米尺度上均匀混合的结构。这种制造纳米粒子的技术提供了大量的HEAs组合物，这些组合物能够形成独特的微结构，从而产生新的物理性质，可以应用于催化等领域，以降低工业过程的能源消耗。实现HEA NPs独特潜力的一个关键挑战是缺乏能够访问NPs的大组成和维度空间并促进对过程-结构-性质相关性的基本理解的制造工艺。这项研究项目的目标是开发一种激光驱动的方法，可靠地允许产生HEA纳米粒子，并控制广泛的组成和尺寸范围。该项目旨在建立广泛的HEA NPs材料库，以加速了解NPs的跨尺度(原子到纳米)结构及其与电和等离子体催化性能的关系的研究。该项目的综合教育计划将向K-12、本科生和研究生水平的广大学生和教师传播研究活动。这些举措旨在通过提高未被充分代表的美国人口的参与度来增加熟练的工程师队伍。该项目旨在开发一种高通量方法，通过使用纳秒脉冲激光驱动的粒子形成方法来创建成分和维度空间都很大的HEA NPs。脉冲激光处理复合多层/合金超薄膜(1-30 nm)有助于在衬底上制备出具有不同组成的孤立液滴状纳米粒子。这些纳米粒子是通过激光诱导的熔体相去湿现象，再加上纳秒时间尺度内的热驱动传质和超快凝固形成的。这种假设驱动的方法论的成功将有助于加速对形成机制、主导因素、元素分布和微观结构的基本理解。利用传统的和先进的数据科学驱动的表征方法，如4D扫描电子显微镜，将解决成分和微结构的复杂性，以填补在理解激光与材料相互作用以创建NPs方面的知识空白。这些结果将对推进微观结构与HEA NPs的电催化和等离子体催化性能的关联的基础科学具有更广泛的意义。该项目将为HEA NPs创建新的材料库，并为催化和其他领域的应用开辟未来的机会。该项目由先进制造计划、已建立的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)以及金属和金属纳米结构计划共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports fundamental research that enables high-throughput creation of high entropy alloy nanoparticles (HEA NPs). HEA NPs are structures where multiple elements (typically five or more) are homogeneously mixed at nanoscale dimensions. This technique of fabricating NPs offers access to a large number of compositions of HEAs that have the ability to form unique microstructures, leading to new physical properties which can be applied in areas like catalysis in order to reduce the energy consumption of industrial processes. A key challenge to realizing the unique potential of HEA NPs is the lack of manufacturing processes that can access a large compositional and dimensional space of NPs and advance the fundamental understanding of process-structure-property correlations. This research project will aim to develop a laser-driven method that reliably allows the generation of HEA NPs with control over broad composition and size ranges. This project aims to generate extensive material libraries of HEA NPs, which can accelerate research to understand the across-the-scale (atomic-to-nano) structure of NPs and their correlation with the electro- and plasmonic catalytic properties. The integrated educational program of this project will disseminate the research activities to a broad community of students and teachers at the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels. These initiatives aim toward increasing the skilled workforce of engineers with improved participation of underrepresented American populations.This project aims to develop a high-throughput methodology to create HEA NPs with large compositional and dimensional space by employing a nanosecond pulsed laser-driven particle formation method. The pulsed laser processing on combinatorial multilayer/alloy ultrathin films (1-30 nm) facilitates the fabrication of well-defined isolated droplet-shaped HEA NPs of various compositions on substrates. These NPs are formed through the laser-induced melt-phase dewetting phenomenon, coupled with thermally-driven mass transport and ultrafast solidification in the nanosecond timescale. The success of this hypothesis-driven methodology will facilitate an accelerated fundamental understanding of the formation mechanism, governing factors, elemental distribution, and microstructures. The utilization of conventional and advanced data science driven characterization methods, such as 4D scanning transmission electron microscopy, will resolve the compositional and microstructural complexities to fill the knowledge gaps in understanding laser-material interactions for creating NPs. These results will have broader implications for advancing the fundamental science of microstructure correlations with the electro- and plasmonic catalytic properties of HEA NPs. The project will lead to the creation of new material libraries for HEA NPs and open up future opportunities for applications in catalysis and other areas. This project is jointly funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Program, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Metals and Metallic Nanostructures Program.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.