institute for materials 2019 progress reportmaterials.gatech.edu/.../2019imatprogressreport.pdf ·...

INSTITUTE FOR MATERIALS 2019 PROGRESS REPORT

Cover Photos: M. McDowell, porous metal for energy storage; and J. Kacher, nanoporous Au, captured on SEM in the Materials Characterization Facility.

Launched formally in 2013, the Institute for Materials (IMat) is one of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs) and serves the interests of a community of more than 125 participating Georgia Tech faculty who are engaged in materials-related research and education. Materials research is one of Tech’s pillars for reputation and visibility and cuts across the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences, as well as GTRI.

IMat works with faculty and students to identify and develop new capabilities in materials research infrastructure and pathways to innovation. The Materials Characterization Facility (MCF), a joint venture of IMat and the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), facilitates shared user access to state-of-the-art measurement techniques, pushing the frontiers of in situ and in operando experimentation (www.mcf.gatech.edu). The Georgia Tech materials community is “brimming” with ideas and aspirations to blaze trails into new research directions, and IMat provides support through faculty led strategic planning, workshops, seed funding and support of development processes for proposals. Emphasis is placed on materials discovery, design and development to foster disruptive innovation, with value-added emphasis on the emergent role of materials data science and informatics.

IMat serves as a single portal of entry for external stakeholders to identify and access the breadth of materials research capabilities at Georgia Tech. Collaboration with other IRIs effectively links materials research to grand challenge research opportunities in materials for manufacturing, materials for energy, sustainable material systems, next generation materials for mobility (aerospace and automotive, for example), materials for health care (including synthetic biomaterials), communications and security. IMat projects global thought leadership in advancing a materials innovation ecosystem at one of the nation’s preeminent research universities, and coordinates with other IRIs to build strategic partnerships with industry, academia and government.

Defining Materials Innovation for the “Next GT:” Five-Year Plan In 2018, IMat embarked on an updated strategic plan after completing a five-year review process. For example, IMat’s External Advisory Panel (EAP) endorsed the development of future faculty leaders through leadership and participation in two faculty Blue Ribbon Panels (BRPs) exploring materials research infrastructure and future workforce development.

Materials Research: A Pillar of Tech’s Reputation and Visibility

IMat 2019 Progress Report - 1

The EAP further advised IMat to continue to leverage e-collaborative materials discovery, design and development to pursue lab-to-cloud infrastructure that is the future for materials research. This includes the coupling of data analytics with synthesis and in situ materials characterization. They also encouraged exploration of novel pathways to prepare the future workforce for materials innovation — including proficiency in data science methods and tools and high throughput methods — by offering enhanced certificate programs, workshops, training and fellowships. Accordingly, IMat has supported two BRPs each of the past two academic years.

In 2018-2019, IMat actively supported large-scale proposal development. In collaboration with Texas A&M University and Duke University, several workshops have been conducted to support a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center planning grant, led by Professors Rick Neu and Preet Singh. The topic of the grant is Advanced Materials Manufacturing and Discovery for Extreme Environments (CAM2DE2).

Along with the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces (STAMI), IMat is supporting development of a NSF Materials Research and Engineering Science Center preliminary proposal. IMat orchestrated a campus response to a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) call on materials for harsh environments. In addition, IMat has teamed with the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) to pursue various Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Department of Energy (DOE) initiatives at the intersections of materials and energy. Interactions with the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDeAS) have supported the materials and manufacturing initiative within the NSF-funded South Big Data Hub, as well as NNSA opportunities at the intersection of materials computation and data science. IMat has actively supported new and ongoing industry collaborations and strategic agreements, along with an additive manufacturing initiative led by the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI).

Progress towards Georgia Tech Materials Strategic Objectives The 2017-2022 campus materials strategic plan has three primary goals:

Goal 1 Further define and nurture the materials innovation ecosystem at Georgia Tech. Foster development of a cross-cutting materials innovation ecosystem that leverages e-collaborative materials discovery, design and development to flesh out future lab-to-cloud infrastructure for materials research.


Goal 2 Project thought leadership of the Georgia Tech materials community. Promote Georgia Tech’s leadership position in novel experimental techniques and methods for materials synthesis, processing and characterization at multiple scales, including high-throughput methods and coupling with computational simulation and data science.

Goal 3 Prepare the workforce of the future for materials discovery and development. Become recognized as an interdisciplinary leader in novel pathways to prepare the future workforce for materials innovation.

Progress is being made on all fronts. In addition to a hosting a number of workshops and providing steady support for large-scale proposal development efforts, IMat has emphasized the following:

Experimental Facilities and Techniques • Secured $3.5 million in new MCF equipment, including TEM, STEM, XRD, XPS, cameras, optics, etc., along

with generating funds from user support.

• Supported proposals to enhance the MCF, including in operando, in situ tools and methods.

• Coupled materials experimental techniques with data science via IMat faculty and graduate student seed funding/fellowships.

Materials Data Science and Informatics • Collaborated with the College of Computing on the NSF FLAMEL (http://flamel.gatech.edu/)

graduate student traineeship program (2014-2019).

• Supported development of the MATIN e-collaborative materials platform (https://matin.gatech.edu/).

• Established the minority leadership program in materials data science and informatics, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

• Communicated needs and assisted in faculty recruiting in academic units to develop a leadership position for Georgia Tech; for example, the hiring of Professor Rampi Ramprasad in MSE.

• Launched the Materials Discovery, Development and Deployment (MD3) center activity.

• Collaborated with the College of Computing and the IDeAS (http://ideas.gatech.edu/) data science IRI in a recently awarded $3.8 million NSF Materials Research Instrumentation proposal supporting high-performance computing for materials science, astrophysics, health sciences and computational biology and chemistry.


Thought Leadership IMat supports and represents the interests of one of the nation’s largest academic materials research communities at Georgia Tech through its vision, leadership and collaborative external networking. IMat has fostered a thought leadership position for Georgia Tech in accelerated materials discovery and development at the intersection of materials and manufacturing. For example, a chapter in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report to the G7 Summit in Rome, Italy, in May 2017, featured the importance of accelerated discovery and development of new and improved materials to support advanced manufacturing while drawing on Tech’s experience. Another example is a 2018 TMS workshop study report on core knowledge and skills at the intersection of materials and manufacturing, sponsored by the NSF.

Future Workforce Development IMat co-supported and coordinated development of the first two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on materials data science offered on the globally accessible Coursera platform: “Materials Data Sciences and Informatics” by Professor Surya Kalidindi and “Introduction to High-Throughput Materials Development” by Professors J. Carson Meredith and Rick Neu.

A second faculty Blue Ribbon Panel was appointed in 2018-2019 to assess opportunities and recommend future directions to enhance thought leadership and future workforce, including:

• Seed funding investment to integrate experimental work with a computational/data-driven component.

• Developing short courses on materials data science-related topics.

• New courses/certificate programs related to Computational Materials Science and/or Materials Informatics.

• New MOOCs to complement the existing ones offered by GT, as outlined above.

The EAP also provided recommendations in mid-2018:

• Continue to promote development of curriculum rich in data science techniques that other faculty can adopt.

• Develop certificates at undergraduate and graduate levels in materials innovation and materials data science.

• Develop and offer tiered (intro, intermediate, advanced) workshops aimed at practicing materials scientists and engineers (skill building) and managers (capability awareness).

• Explore development of faculty and student fellowships/internships with industry and government labs.


Italian G7 Presidency 2017/ OECD Report — www.g7italy.it

Highlights: Innovative Materials Research Programs at Georgia Tech

High-Throughput Polymer Science

Professors Carson Meredith (ChBE), Martha Grover (ChBE) and Elsa Reichmanis (ChBE), are working together to make new tools that enable high-throughput screening of polymers and composites.

Motivated by the problem of studying large numbers of combinations of compositions, chemical structures, surface modifications and processing conditions, the team is developing microfluidic tools to prepare small volumes of blended polymers. The emphasis is on polymers that must be blended in relatively hot organic solvents, such as poly(propylene). A prototype of a device is shown below, which is a metallized version of microfluidic mixing channels usually created in plastic or glass substrates for aqueous solutions.

The idea is to apply this tool to prepare large numbers of blends very efficiently, allowing exploration of the combined interacting effects of composition and processing in systems that are relevant to industrial practice where temperature is elevated. The high-throughput sample preparation is required to realize enhanced efficiency in materials discovery, where tools for characterization of mechanical and other properties are becoming widely available. In addition, high-throughput experimentation of complex polymer blends and composites supports the emerging field of informatics-driven discovery of new materials. Based on the prior work and experience of Professors Grover and Reichmanis, who applied materials informatics approaches to organic electronic polymers, the team has sought to couple machine learning predictive approaches with high-throughput experiment.

Eventually, the goal is to extend the approach to allow preparation of blends and composites from very small volumes (milligrams) with controlled composition from polymer melts (where no solvent is present). Melt processing is the industry standard but no high-throughput tools exist to enable comparable results between lab and commercial scale processing. The Meredith group intends to change this and open up a new enabling technique in polymer blends and composites screening.


Meredith Grover

Reichmanis

Polymer Screening Prototype

C. Meredith

Virtual Research Accelerates Design and Application

Materials development over much of the past 7,000 years has been guided largely by philosophy, experience and intuition. That trend accelerated change in the past several decades, thanks to quantitative theories, advanced experimental capabilities and modern computing power. Part of that change is the result of

work by Rampi Ramprasad, the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy Sustainability, MSE, and an IMat-affiliated faculty member. He and his group have been studying materials on the computer — virtually — using fundamental theories (such as quantum mechanics) and data-driven methods (such as machine learning). These methods significantly accelerate the design and discovery of new application-specific materials by screening thousands of new materials virtually before they are actually made, providing guidance

for the specific types of materials that should be made and tested.

A recent highlight of Dr. Ramprasad’s research relates to his work on polymer insulators for electronic energy storage. Along with colleagues involved in materials synthesis and characterization, the Ramprasad group has been able to show how quantum mechanics-based computations can truly drive and transform the discovery of new materials.

A new addition to Dr. Ramprasad’s computational toolkit portfolio is “machine learning,” a branch of artificial intelligence that is concerned with how we can create a computer system that can automatically, progressively learn and improve through experience and past data. Also in this machine-learning realm, the group is exploring how a computer system may be trained to learn from itself and its own experiences during the course of a quantum mechanics-based materials simulation. These efforts could lead to materials simulation capabilities that preserve the high fidelity of quantum mechanical calculations while achieving speedup of six-to-eight orders of magnitude.

Identifying Big Challenges with Surfaces and Interfaces

The Center for the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces (STAMI) was established in July 2016 and is organized around four groups: the Center for Organic Photonics

and Electronics (COPE), the Georgia Tech Polymer Network (GTPN), the Community for Research on Active Surfaces and Interfaces (CRASI) and the Soft Matter Incubator (SMI), each with a strong research focus and facilitating new research interactions among members using a combination of seed programs, focused meetings and student-run activities. More information can be found at http://stami.gatech.edu/.

A prime example of STAMI activities is CRASI’s Odyssey of the Mind (OM) lunches, which serve as forums for scientific brainstorming and team-building designed to energize and enable Georgia Tech faculty to identify big problems for which the science of surfaces and interfaces is a critical component.


Ramprasad

These OM lunches create an environment where faculty are sufficiently comfortable to explore scientific frontiers while encouraging visionary, big-picture thinking for solutions to “big” problems. The conversations start to build potential teams well in advance of calls for large externally funded research centers so that CRASI members can be rapidly mobilized.

STAMI has worked hard in the past two years to engage junior faculty, awarding micro-grants, supporting one-on-one mentoring activities and promoting their research activities: for example, at STAMI Industrial Days and Expositions, 16 junior faculty have presented before more than 50 industrial participants from over 25 companies.

Over the past 28 months, STAMI faculty have self-reported multi-investigator grants of more than $25 million for which their association with STAMI has contributed to the formulation of key ideas and/or collaborations in the successful proposals, including:

• At least five funded MURIs;

• Funding from Mitsubishi Chemical, Samsung, Cambridge Display Technology, Simmons, ExxonMobil, NXN Licensing, Sigma-Aldrich and Capacitor Sciences;

• Four funded DURIPs (defense instrumentation grants);

• NSF DMREF COPE/GTPN with faculty from PHYS, CHEM, MSE and ChBE;

• A DOE BEEPS (under negotiation), GTPN/SMI, CRASI with faculty from MSE, ChBE, CHE and ME;

• A Department of Education GAAN Fellowship grant with faculty from CHEM, CHBE and MSE; and

• Various grants from NSF, AFRL, AFOSR, ONR, DOE, DTRA, NSA, Oak Ridge and Sandia.

MPCF Explores More Reliable Materials

The Mechanical Properties Characterization Facility (MPCF) is an IMat shared resources facility that supports education and research programs related to processing/structure/properties relationships in structural

materials (http://mpcf.gatech.edu/). The MPCF is central to our competitiveness for industry funding in major auto, aerospace and energy sectors. Georgia Tech is a Pratt & Whitney Center of Excellence in materials and is one of two institutions in the U.S. to be named a Siemens Center for Knowledge Interchange (CKI).

Principal activities of the MPCF are directed towards the measurement and modeling of the mechanical properties of engineering materials, primarily related to deformation and reliability of materials. Other activities include component and non-standard mechanical testing, thermomechanical processing and the aging and long-term reliability of materials.

Support for the operation and maintenance of the facility comes from IMat and revenue received from the recharge center using the Shared User Management System (SUMS). Research projects with more than $4 million in annual expenditures in sponsored research require the use of the MPCF.


MPCF

The MPCF occupies a total of 4,250 sq. ft. across three buildings, and has an extensive list of equipment. Research Engineer Dr. James Collins has successfully completed 1.5 years of service to the lab. Efforts continue to interact

with Facilities Design and Construction (FDC) on designing and constructing a new space for the MPCF. As an interdisciplinary user facility, the MPCF serves researchers at Georgia Tech and external industry and

university partnerships. Internal projects include sponsored and non-sponsored research, senior capstone projects, extracurricular clubs and organizations (e.g., GT Motorsports) and undergraduate

class support. During FY2018, the MPCF supported:

• 67 sponsored, non-sponsored, class and capstone design research projects;

• Projects from Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Industrial and System Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and

Computer Engineering and GTRI; and

• Classes for training Teaching Assistants, guidance for design of experiments, and testing support for undergraduate classes for MSE.

Novel in situ Experiments Yield New Understanding

The group led by Josh Kacher, Assistant Professor in MSE, conducted in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) corrosion experiments on Fe thin films to create

ground-breaking algorithms that determine corrosion rates. In work currently under review for publication in Ultramicroscopy, this team has used

automated image recognition algorithms to extract corrosion front propagation rates and to detect corrosion byproducts forming in real time. Videos from these in situ

corrosion experiments have recently been made available to students. One of Surya Kalidindi’s students was able to develop an approach for which the propagation rate of each

individual local corrosion front could be instantaneously determined, providing a much more highly enriched data set. This kind of information can lead to fundamental new and improved

approaches for estimating corrosion of materials in harsh environments, which is a major drain on the economy.

These in situ TEM corrosion and automated image analysis techniques are now being expanded to materials of high interest for commercial applications — such as additive manufactured stainless steel — to

determine how material process routes affect initiation of the corrosion process.

In other work, Kacher’s group is continuing to develop pattern analysis algorithms for in situ TEM nanobeam diffraction experiments. These experiments will be coupled with the in situ corrosion experiments, as well as in

situ deformation experiments of ultrafine grained gold samples. This work has generated significant interest and partnership with Gatan, the leading supplier of detectors for TEM, and led to an invited webinar presentation with Gatan in early summer 2019.


Kacher

MD3 — Reducing the Materials-Manufacturing Gap

Several years ago, Georgia Tech began work to create the nation’s first university/industry collaborative research center focused on materials data science — MD3 (for materials design, development and deployment).

The MD3 center, established with the support of IMat, is the first comprehensive Materials e-Innovation Ecosystem, serving as a model to strengthen relationships with various global industry partners. One of its key goals is to develop technologies that can help to dramatically reduce the materials-manufacturing gap in the creation of new products, which traditionally has taken 15 to 20 years.

In 2019, significant progress has been made in establishing MD3 prior to its launch. “We have now formalized the agreements that we present to prospective partners for MD3,” said Professor Surya R. Kalidindi, with joint appointments in the Schools of ME, CSE and MSE. “With this document in hand, we can be very specific about what we are offering to the diverse

stakeholders in materials development whom we will be approaching.”

These future members will be given a unique opportunity to participate in MD3’s modern Materials e-Innovation Ecosystem. MD3 will curate and disseminate the best practices to foster a marketplace of ideas for cultivating materials data, analytic tools and knowledge databases. Membership will create opportunities for members to influence and recruit the future workforce, and to incubate new relationships with other members, including data services vendors. Dr. Kalidindi’s team is also working to create a web portal for membership application and to access everything that MD3 will be offering. The web portal is slated to be completed at the end of 2019.

IMat continues to support development of the MD3 — from working on the formal agreement to helping put together proposals for grants. With sustained seed support from IMat, Dr. Kalidindi has received the largest single-investigator grant awarded by the Department of Defense (DoD). Dr. Kalidindi was one of 11 to join the 2018 Class of Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows (VBFF), representing a first for Georgia Tech for this prestigious award. The 2018 class joins the current 45 fellows, who are sponsored by the DoD to conduct foundational research in core science and engineering disciplines that underpin future DoD capabilities. Kalidindi’s work dovetails with the mission of MD3. The research he is conducting focuses on the fusion of inherently incomplete and uncertain multiscale, multiphysics materials knowledge in pursuit of novel engineered materials.


Kalidindi

IMat Executive Director McDowell Honored with Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award

David McDowell doesn’t like being put in a box. That’s one of the reasons why, after earning a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he headed south to begin his career at Georgia Tech.

“One thing I didn’t want was to go to a place where they had a slot for me to fit into: ‘Professor X is retiring; we need to cover this slot. We see you as a potential for that,’” McDowell said. “I wanted to

define my own path and I thought Georgia Tech would allow me to do that.”

He said he wanted a place where he could exert his vision and leadership from an early stage.

“At the time — the late 70s and early 80s — Georgia Tech was a great educational institution, but not as highly rated in research as it is today,” he said. “It was approaching the top 20-25 territory, and I could see that people here had fire in their belly to make that happen. So coming here was a pretty easy decision.”

That was in 1983. Now, 36 years later, McDowell, Regents Professor and Carter N. Paden Jr. Distinguished Chair in Metals Processing, received Georgia Tech’s highest award given to a faculty member — the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award.

The award recognizes outstanding achievement in teaching, research and service. Instituted in 1984 by the Class of 1934 in observance of its 50th reunion, the award is presented to a professor who has made significant, long-term contributions that have brought widespread recognition to the professor, to his or her school and to the Institute.

“For me, this award is really a recognition of my being here,” McDowell said. “It shows that there’s a trace of my contributions.”

He will leave much more than a trace.

Over the course of three and a half decades, McDowell has done groundbreaking research in developing new techniques and methods for measuring, understanding and modeling the way materials behave and how to use this information to improve the performance of products that benefit everyday life in areas such as transportation and energy production. He has produced more than 500 published papers or book chapters as author or co-author (including more than 335 refereed journal articles) and more than 600 presentations. For 20 years he served as director of the Mechanical Properties Research Laboratory, a major university laboratory in experimental fatigue and fracture research. And he is the founding executive director of the Institute for Materials, serving as a driver of the development and growth of materials research and education at Tech.

“What has kept me in the academic realm is my love for the development of students and, in particular, graduate students — developing them as people and helping them realize their goals and dreams,” McDowell said. “I’m not a ‘grass is greener’ person. Whenever you change universities, you alter the momentum of your own program. I made the decision at multiple points that I can get more accomplished in my career staying the course and being consistent with a position at Georgia Tech.”

Copyright 2019 • Georgia Tech Institute for Materials • An equal education and employment opportunity institution.


McDowell

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