Olivia Graeve's team is "crystal clear" about quantifying crystallinity

UC San Diego engineering professor and materials science pioneer Olivia Graeve’s research team has a new paper out that reports on work that will be used to help materials scientists develop higher quality materials for use in many applications including super-durable solar cells, ultra-hard metals for space exploration, better infrared optical fibers for carrying digital information, and materials for new kinds of biomedical devices like self-expanding stents.

The paper was published by PLOS ONE on June 22, 2020.

A schematic representation of the team’s DSC-based methodology

 for determination of the change of crystallinity and 

crystallinity percentage as a function of temperature.

In this particular paper, the researchers present a new method for calculating the initial crystallinity, change of crystallinity and crystallinity percentage of amorphous metal alloys as a function of temperature. The first author on the paper is Arash Yazdani who is finishing his PhD at UC San Diego in Professor Graeve's lab.

"This is exciting materials science work that will have an impact in the field," said Graeve. “We all live in this world in which materials science plays a role in nearly everything we do. We all benefit from the materials science breakthroughs yet to be developed. If you think you're interested in this kind of work, pursue it. Don't leave it up to others to do the work. There is a place for everyone in materials science.”

The methods presented in this paper are particularly interesting because the behavior of amorphous materials for use in exciting applications often depends on the partial crystalline nature of the materials. Creating materials with properties such as ultra-hardness or super-resistance to corroding often depends on being able to characterize and control crystallinity, and that's what this research is working toward.

Paper info

"A Method to Quantify Crystallinity in Amorphous Metal Alloys:  A Differential Scanning Calorimetry Study," in PLOS.

Authors: Arash Yazdani (1), Günther W.H. Höhne (2), Scott T. Misture (3), Olivia A. Graeve (4)

1  Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

University of California, San Diego

9500 Gilman Drive – MC 0411

La Jolla, CA 92093-0411, USA

2  University of Ulm

Helmholtzstraße 16, 89081 Ulm, Germany

3  Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering

Alfred University

2 Pine Street, Alfred, NY 14802, USA