Seminar Speaker: Yuntian Zhu, City University of Hong Kong

Heterostructured Materials: A Fast-Developing New Materials Field

Abstract

Strong and tough materials are desired for lightweight applications such as electric cars and aerospace applications. Recently, heterostructures are found to produce unprecedented strength and ductility that are considered impossible from our textbook knowledge and materials history. Heterostructured materials consist of heterogeneous zones with dramatic (>100%) variations in mechanical and/or physical properties. The interaction in these hetero-zones produces a synergistic effect where the integrated property exceeds the prediction by the rule-of-mixtures. Importantly, HS materials can be produced by current industrial facilities at a large scale and low cost. There are many scientific issues with such materials that challenge the communities of experimental materials science and computational material mechanics. Heterostructured materials are quickly becoming a hot research field with multiple international conferences/workshops organized in different countries per year.

Biography

Yuntian Zhu joined the City University of Hong Kong in 2020 as a Chair Professor. Prior to this, he was a Distinguished Professor at NC State University from 2007 to 2020. He worked as a postdoc, staff member, and team leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) until 2007 after obtaining his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. Recently he has focused on the deformation mechanisms at the dislocation level and mechanical behaviors of heterostructured materials and nano/ultrafine-grained materials. He is an experimentalist with a primary interest in fundamental aspects of materials research and also in designing materials with superior strength and ductility. He and his colleagues are pioneers in the emerging field of
heterostructured materials. He recently received the Institute of Metals Lecture and Robert Franklin Mehl Award, ASM International Albert Sauveur Award, IUMRS Sômiya Award, TMS SMD Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award, and TMS Leadership Award. He has been elected to the Academia Europaea, National Academy of Inventors (US), as well as Fellows of five academic societies: TMS, MRS, APS, ASM, and AAAS. More information can be found on his personal website.