High-throughput Screening System for Predictive Discovery of New Materials
Abstract
The diamond, the gemstone we admire for its beauty and rarity, is a metastable form of carbon and needs harsh conditions to convert from more stable graphite. Diamond is sufficiently durable in wedding rings to outlast marriages and is used in several technological applications. Many metals (such as nickel, cobalt, and tungsten) or ceramic materials (such as silicon carbide) exist in metastable forms. Like the diamond, they could hold superior properties and offer exciting opportunities to develop next-generation materials ranging from quantum computers to structural engineering applications. However, these metastable materials do not exist in nature, and their fabrication poses a significant challenge. This project aims to implement new instrumentation for accelerated material discovery by combining the predictive power of artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The new system will provide high-throughput processing and screening data for AI-based optimization of metastable materials preparation. The team for this project relies on expertise from the Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL) in the Physics Department, the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame (UND). This project will create novel capabilities, advance materials, and foster collaborations to supply innovations to Department of Defense (DoD) Basic Research Programs. The proposed system will create cutting-edge methods for materials research. The newly developed system will significantly enhance our ability to process and characterize materials. Time- and energy-intensive furnace-based processing approaches such as spark plasma sintering cannot provide larger data sets for AI-based optimizations. The proposed system will fill the existing processing gap and expand the reach to materials that cannot be prepared today. The novel experimental techniques and AI methods will educate and train a new generation of scientists and engineers to address Defense enterprise needs. The proposed system will establish new research directions for preparing known and discovering unknown metastable materials. This project will also collaborate with an international partner to transfer a new method/device, thus ensuring U.S. scientific superiority.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 19, 2023
- Source ID
- W911NF2310070
Entities
People
- Khachatur Manukyan
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- United States Army
- University of Notre Dame