MRI: Acquisition of In Situ TEM Probing Capability to Elucidate the Stability of Nanostructured Materials

University Of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa AL

Investigators

Abstract

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a means to characterize materials from which connections between structure and properties are understood. Such links allow scientists the understanding needed to engineer new materials with superior performances. In this award, a microscopy platform for real-time mechanical measurements in the TEM will be enabled. This platform will enable researchers to watch how materials, such as glasses, metals, and ceramics bend and break. From these observations, researchers gain new insights and understanding in how materials can be engineering to withstand greater mechanical load before failure. The instrument platform will be integrated into the University of Alabama's (UA) TEM, which is located in a general user facility. Over the past decade, UA's TEM has enabled over 250 users (both UA and off-site) in their research. This has provided high-tech training needed for the next-generation national science workforce. The new instrumentation will continue to ensure the continuation of educational and workforce development through course work and related workshops and conferences that will be held on the campus of UA. This award enables new capabilities to the University of Alabama's (UA) transmission electron microscopy (TEM) research activities. Specifically, the platform will allow researchers to measure and quantify in situ, real time deformation mechanisms to various loading behavior at the nanometric length scale. This platform will substantially impact the active and emerging research programs in deformation including those in glassy-crystalline composites, nanocrystalline metallic grains, and those in carbide and nitride ceramics. This toolset will be the linchpin technology that bridges synthesis-properties-simulations by characterization of how nanostructure regulates the hierarchy of deformation mechanisms. The in situ probe will be coupled to an existing precession electron diffraction imaging technique where the grain character under the in situ loading will be directly correlated. Without this dynamical probing capability, material responses are inferred leaving critical gaps in connecting experimental feedback to computational materials science predictions and understanding. In the past decade, UA's TEM has been a centerpiece microscope in its user facility (www.caf.ua.edu), being the most used tool in the center that has enabled over 250 users on and off the campus in their research activities. These users have graduated and are engaged in careers that build our next-generation national workforce.