The MSU Foundation Grants Committee recently awarded a Strategic Partnership Grant to a group of MSU researchers – including several at NSCL and FRIB – in order to establish a broad team to study complex materials under extreme conditions. The $400,000 award will pull together faculty from chemical engineering and materials science, physics and astronomy, electrical and computer engineering, NSCL, and FRIB.
FRIB and NSCL will benefit from a strong partnership with material science, and vice versa. In order to maximize FRIB’s science and maintain its world leadership, material research and development will be needed throughout its lifetime. NSCL now and FRIB in the future can provide heavy-ion material irradiations for a wide range of material studies.
Together with swift heavy ion beams available at NSCL, the partnership will leverage other unique MSU facilities and capabilities, including an ultrafast laser/ultrafast electron diffraction probe lab in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, TEM and in- situ SEM fracture and fatigue testing and analysis in the Department of Chemistry, and diamond facilities at MSU’s Fraunhofer Center. Also important will be the groups experience with diamond detectors, condensed matter theory expertise and cutting-edge radiation transport codes.
The group plans to investigate graphite, diamond and titanium alloys as representative extreme materials in order to better understand radiation damage and healing, improve fatigue strength, and investigate different diamond materials for detectors for fast heavy ions. The chosen materials are important for diverse applications (aerospace, nuclear, accelerators) and highly relevant for FRIB and NSCL which require high power targets and beam dumps as well as fast timing detectors).
Group members include Georg Bollen, Frederique Pellemoine, and Reg Ronningen (FRIB); Wolfgang Mittig and Andreas Stolz (NSCL); Phil Duxbury and Chong-Yu Ruan (Physics and Astronomy); Tim Grotjohn (Electrical and Computer Engineering); and Carl Boehlert (Chemical Engineering and Material Science).