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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Materials@RPI Spring 2013

Department Head Message Student News

FacultyNews

New Lab for Undergrads

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Welcome to the Spring 2013 edition of Materials@RPI.

Much has happened in the past year! We are delighted to have Ying Chen here as our newest member of the faculty (see story on page 6), and are excited about the new directions in nanostructured metallic systems that her research will bring our department. We also are delighted to announce that Chaitanya Ullal of the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany will be joining our faculty in Fall 2013: look for full details in the next issue of our newsletter.

Among our existing faculty, Daniel Lewis received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor to all of our delight, but none of our surprise! Linda Schadler was appointed Russell Sage Professor of Engineering, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to materials research and education. We also bid farewell to one of our most dedicated and accomplished teachers, Robert Messler, who retired at the end of 2012. Bob has made outstanding contributions to our research programs in welding and manufacturing, and particularly to our educational programs. I am sure that many of our alumni reading this will remember his classes with great appreciation. He has also accelerated his passion for publishing in recent years, with major texts in introductory materials engineering and in engineering problem solving.

We will greatly miss him, but look forward to a new phase of working with him. Also, Doug Chrisey left us in the past year to become the Cornelia and Arthur Jung Chair in Materials Engineering at Tulane University. His leadership in biomaterials in the laboratory and the classroom will be missed, and we wish him the very best in his new position.

We are very excited about the growth of our undergraduate program. Our graduating classes each year are among the largest ever in our department (see story on Class of 2012 on page 4), and the class of 2016 is on track to be our largest yet! Led by Don van Steele, recently appointed Director of Undergraduate Laboratories, we are developing major new laboratory curricula in several of our key classes and recently inaugurated a major new undergraduate laboratory facility (page 11). Our Materials Advantage organization has been particularly active, with a group of fifteen of our undergraduates attending the Materials Science and Technology meeting in Pittsburgh in October. In graduate education, we are delighted to have inaugurated our annual Graduate Student Research Excellence Awards, based on work described in a submitted or published journal paper in the previous year. The first year’s winners were Jenn Gagner and Xiaowei Wu, who presented their work in our Departmental Seminar series in April (page 5).

Among many research advances in the past year, Professor Ramanath’s group published their new breakthroughs in bulk nanostructured thermoelectrics in Nature Materials. In the same issue of Nature Materials, Professors Koratkar (one of our recent joint appointees as described in last year’s newsletter) and Shi described their

work on wetting transparency of graphene. We also continue to build world class research facilities. Our new multi-chamber system providing in-situ growth, deposition, fabrication, surface spectroscopy, and environments spanning twelve orders of magnitude in ambient pressure (funded through an NSF-MRI award) is operational in conjunction with our recently acquired X-Ray Photoelectron system. Later this year we will be installing a new environmental microscopy system, equipped with focused ion and field emission electron sources, operating in pressure and temperature regimes where liquid water may be maintained. This equipment is enabled partially through the generous support of Prof. George Pearsall ’55. The first recipient of the “Hugo ’56 and Evelyn Ferguson” graduate student fellowship, announced in last year’s newsletter, is Siddharth Sundaraman who is in Professor Liping Huang’s group. These generous gifts are examples of the growing engagement and support of our alumni.

Finally, thanks to all those colleagues and alumni who have visited in the past year to give seminars, to plan collaborations, to give classes, or just to visit and catch up. Please do consider keeping in contact with us through the information on page 12, and please do consider supporting our department in its aims to provide the very best education for our undergraduate and graduate students, as we prepare them to be leaders among the next generation of materials scientists and engineers.

With very best wishes,

Message from the Department Head

Congratulations to PhD student Garth Scannell and Senior Qiran Xiao for being selected as recipients of Rensselaer’s 19th Founders Award of Excellence in the graduate student and undergraduate student category!

The Founders Award of Excellence was established in 1994 to honor students who embody qualities of creativity, discovery, leadership, and the values of pride and responsibility at Rensselaer.

The award consists of a special certificate, recognition by faculty, staff, and peers at the Honors Convocation ceremony, and a cash prize. Recipients of this award must demonstrate strong academic performance, pride and responsibility, outstanding leadership skills exhibiting discretion, judgment, and well-rounded regard for the opinions of others, and originality and imagination that may be evidenced by the potential to solve problems and possess skills to promote new ideas and theories in his/her field of study.

Senior Qiran Xiao’s research focuses on understanding the deformation mechanism of bulk metallic

glasses using molecular dynamics simulations. Bulk metallic glasses have received a lot of attention recently because of their potential strength, wear, and corrosion resistance. However, many aspects of metallic glasses are unknown, particularly in the nanoscale regime. Qiran’s simulation revealed the precise deformation mode of metallic glass nanopillars. Furthermore, he demonstrated that sample preparation, particularly high-energy ion irradiation, could dramatically alter their deformation behavior.

PhD student Garth Scannell’s research is to develop a better understanding of the glass atomic structure using the response of elastic moduli to external stimuli as a probe. He uses in-situ Brillouin and Raman light scattering experiments under high temperature, high pressure and high strain conditions to illustrate the structural origins of thermal-mechanical anomalies in glasses. His research shows that the extremely low or negative thermal expansion, the positive temperature derivative, and negative pressure derivative of elastic moduli in silica-rich glasses share some common structural roots.

Students Receive the Rensselaer Founders of Excellence Award

An artistic representation of a

shear band inside a Zr-based

metallic glass nanowire by Qiran

Xiao.

In-situ high temperature Brillouin light scattering experiments on

pure silica glass (l) and less brittle glass from Asashi Glass in Japan.Robert Hull, Henry Burlage Chair of Engineer-ing & Head, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

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The class of 2012 was a vibrant class who made multiple contributions to the campus. We wish them well as they head to graduate school, industry, and service. Some students are attending graduate school at the University of Florida, Johns Hopkins University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Rensselaer, among other leading institutions. Others joined Applied Materials, Timken Company, MicroStrain, Chromalloy, SUBMEPP/NAVSEA, GE Aviation, Army Research Lab and the US Navy.

At the Department Commencement Celebration, several awards were presented. The Matthew Albert Hunter Prize, awarded to a senior who has demonstrated outstanding ability in academic

work leading to a career in the field, was given to Rebecca Cioffi. The Scott Mackay Prize, for the student who has given time and effort to the service of others, was awarded to Nadine Alexis. The Livingston W. Houston Citizenship Award was given to Carly Antonucci. The award was established by Clay P. Bedford, the prize is given in memory of Livingston Waddell Houston, 11th president of Rensselaer. It is awarded at Commencement to a student who, in the opinion of a committee consisting of the president of the university, the provost, dean of students, director of athletics, and director of the student union, is considered the “First Citizen of the College.” The recipient must rank high in character, leadership, scholarship, and athletic ability.

Rensselaer Student Wins MRS Award

PhD student Rutvik Mehta, was recently awarded the MRS Silver Graduate Student Award for a presentation on “Scalable Bottom-up Production of Doped Nanocrystals and Their Assembly into Functional Materials Using Microwaves” at the MRS 2012 Spring Meeting in San Francisco. (See article on page 8 for more details). The MRS Graduate Student Awards are intended to honor and encourage graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research display a high order of excellence and distinction. The criteria for selection are excellence in the conduct of materials research and promise for future substantial achievement in materials research.

Other Awards:

PhD student Magda Jackson, was a recipient of the first School of Engineering TA award for her work in Prof. Tomozawa’s Structure of Engineering Materials course. The award is to recognize exceptional performance by a Teaching Assistant.

Student News

Congratulations and Good Luck to the Class of 2012!

MIT-Lemelson Finalist - Zepu Wang

PhD Student Zepu Wang Was One of Three Finalists for the $30,000 2012 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize. Zepu Wang developed a field grading material to reduce field concentration in high voltage transmission applications. This new nanocomposite material has the promise of enabling smarter, more reliable, and greener power systems. The technology could also significantly reduce the frequency of power outages.

Wang’s project titled, “Nanocomposites Filled with Graphene Oxide—A Revolutionary Field

Grading Material for High-Voltage Power Systems,” was advised by Professor Linda Schadler, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering, and Keith Nelson, professor emeritus.

Zepu Wang also won the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society Graduate Fellowship, 2011. The graduate fellowships, established by the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society, are offered to further graduate education in the areas of electrical insulation and dielectric phenomena of interest to the Society, and are open to suitable candidates from all over the world.

Undergrad Spotlight

Senior Richard Hutchison: Winner of the Rensselaer Leadership Award given in recognition of an outstanding record of academic and personal achievements, a strong commitment to excellence, and illustration of intellectual curiosity has been doing research on making LEDs more efficient by developing transparent high-refractive-index zirconia/epoxy nanocomposites for LED encapsulation. This novel LED encapsulant material can enlarge the light escape cone and enhance the light-extraction efficiency from LED chips. One technical challenge with this project was to achieve a homogeneous dispersion of high-refractive-index nanoparticles in an epoxy matrix in order to increase the refractive index of the encapsulant while maintaining high optical transparency. To achieve this, high-refractive-index zirconia nanoparticles were synthesized and then surface modified with an epoxy-compatible silane-coupling agent. They were then mixed with the epoxy matrix, and a small drop of the resulting nanocomposite was used for LED encapsulation (as shown in the pic). It was found that, compared with the commercial epoxy encapsulant, significant increase of light-output power of the LEDs was achieved with the encapsulation of the transparent high-refractive-index zirconia/epoxy nanocomposite.

On March 28th, PhD students Jennifer Gagner and Xiaowei Wu gave presentations to a full house as the first Research Excellence Award recipients. The award is to recognize MSE graduate students for their outstanding research accomplishments, as evidenced by a submitted or published journal article. It will be presented annually to up to

two current MSE graduate students. Recipient(s) will receive a cash prize and a certificate of the achievement. Jennifer presented work on “Effect of Gold Nanoparticle Morphology on Adsorbed Protein Structure and Function” and Xiaowei presented work on “A Novel Nanoscale Non-contact Temperature Measurement Technique”.

Inaugural Research Excellence Award

Zepu Wang

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Professor Robert W Messler, Jr. ’65 will be retiring this December after 28 years of service at Rensselaer. His commitment to education, to Rensse-laer, and the students has been a valu-able asset to the Department. While serving as the Associate Dean for Aca-demic & Student Affairs in the School of Engineering, he was instrumental in the development of the Multi Disciplinary Design Laboratory that provides a venue for Capstone Senior Design Students to work on industrial problems and spent many years teach-ing the capstone course to Materials Science and Engineering Seniors. He recognized the value not only of intrinsic intellectual ability, but hard work, and engineering instinct and he will be sorely missed.

Professor Messler received his B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering in 1965 and his PhD in Physical Metallurgy in 1971, both from RPI. After earning his degrees, he worked in industry for Grumman Aerospace and Eutectic Castolin Corp., finally leaving a posi-tion as the VP of Technical Training and Services at Eutectic Castolin to

join Rensselaer in 1984. During his career at Rensselaer, Bob taught more than 100 courses and ~3200 students in the classroom and supervised over 78 undergraduate research projects, and 21 graduate student theses. His passion for working with under-graduate students is evidenced by his numerous teaching awards, the most recent being ASM’s Albert Easton White Distinguished Teacher Award for 2011. He is also the author of 6 books and over 140 publications. He is a Fellow of both ASM International and the American Welding Society.

Prof. Messler will be spending his re-tirement enjoying his grandchildren as well as working on his seventh book on reverse engineering.

Faculty NewsAfter 28 years of service Professor

Robert Messer Jr will be retiring

From the MS&E Files: Dr Messler at work in his welding lab.

The Department is pleased to welcome a new faculty member – Dr. Ying Chen. Dr. Chen’s expertise is in mechanical properties of materials with an emphasis on metals, effects of interfaces and defects, shape memory materials, and mesoscale and continuum mechanical modeling. She got her B.S. from Tsinghua University in 2004 and Ph.D. from MIT in 2008, both in Materials Science and Engineering. After working as a post doc at MIT for two years and as a materials scientist at General Electric’s Global Research Center for a year, she joined Rensselaer in December of 2011. Her group at Rensselaer uses both experimental and computational techniques to study microstructure-mechanical property relationships and small length scale effects in multifunctional smart materials (such as shape memory materials and ferromagnetic materials, as well as nanocrystalline structural materials. http://homepages.rpi.edu/~cheny20/

The Department Welcomes Dr Ying Chen

The Engineering Institute for Young Women students held the first-ever ‘Mousetrap Car Olympics’ at Rensselaer

Two High School students climbed the stairs between the workshop and design studio in the RPI School of Engineering’s Multidisciplinary Design Laboratory and talked about how to make their mousetrap car go faster. After all, engineers never stop thinking about ways to improve their work. 90 high school girls were learning that - and more - at the Engineering Institute for Young Women camp, which is a week-long camp for female students in grades 7-11. The camp, lead by Professors Ozisik and Lewis, is the result of a partnership between Niskayuna Schools, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, GE, Northeastern Advanced Technological Education Center, The Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium and the National Science Foundation. It was designed to spark girls’ interest in science, technology, and engineering.

The students worked in teams to prepare for Rensselaer’s first-ever “Mousetrap Car Olympics”, which tested how well they could design and construct cars powered by the spring of a mousetrap to perform a series of specific tasks.

The Engineering Institute for Young Women is part of a larger effort under the Northeast Advanced Technological Education Center at Hudson Valley Community College to bring together businesses, educators, and government in a collaborative effort to build a highly-skilled technical workforce to meet the soon-to-be burgeoning employment demands of these rapidly growing industries in our region. NEATEC is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation. Assoc. Profs. Rahmi Ozisik and Daniel Lewis of Materials Science and Engineering put together the camp.

One student said the hands-on approach to the camp had heightened her interest in science, engineering, math and science. “It’s great because it’s visual,” she said. “It’s not just text. You learn from experience.”

Professor Rahmi Ozisik

Professor Daniel Lewis

“It’s a matter of planning and trying to figure everything out, and then building it in just a short amount of time,” said a Niskayuna High School sophomore. “It’s never perfect.” “It’s trial and error.”

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High-efficiency thermoelectric materials are attractive for harvest-ing electricity from waste heat and solid-state refrigeration, with many applications in energy and electronics. Professor Ganpati Ramanath’s group has synthesized a new class of chemically-doped bulk thermoelectric nanomateri-als from nanostructures synthe-sized by zapping chemicals in a microwave oven. The processing approach is inexpensive and up-scalable, and the resultant nano-materials exhibit thermoelectric figures of merit that match or exceed the state-of-the-art. The superior properties are realized by sculpting nanocrystal shape and size using a molecular surfac-tant that also serves as a doping agent. The microwave-synthesized

nanocrystals are compacted and sintered into bulk pellets where nanostructuring decreases thermal conductivity while doping facili-tates the retention of high elec-trical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient. This combination of properties is the key for high effi-ciency heat pumping or electricity generation. Prof. Ramanath, his student Rutvik J. Mehta, and his collaborator, Associate Professor Theo Borca-Tasciuc from the de-partment of Mechanical Engineer-ing , have shown that this process is versatile and can be applied to a variety of semiconductor and ox-ide materials. Their p-type materi-als are as efficient as the best ones on the market, while the n-type materials are at least 25 percent more efficient. Their work was

Ramanath Group Develops a New Class of Thermoelectric Materials by Inexpensive Microwaving

Koratkar and Shi Demonstrate Wetting Transparency of GrapheneGraphene, an exciting new nanomaterial, is a single layer of carbon with extraordinary electrical, magnetically, mechanical and optical properties. For instance, graphene is highly transparent optically: allowing over 97% of white light to pass through. Recently, Professors Koratkar and Shi, among a team of researchers at RPI and Rice University, investigated the impact of graphene coatings on the wetting behavior of the underlying substrates. It was found that a layer of graphene coating does not change the substrate’s wetting behavior. In other words, the graphene coating is “transparent” to the fluid-substrate interaction, and the associated wetting behavior of the fluid on the substrate. This phenomenon is dubbed “wetting transparency”. This discovery was published earlier

this year in Nature Materials (Nature Materials 11, 217-222 (2012).Graduate student Xi Mi and his advisor, Professor Shi, provided the modeling and theoretical understanding of the wetting transparency.Through large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and continuum modeling, they reproduced the experimental observations, and found that the long-range Van der Waals interaction and the extreme thinness of graphene are responsible for the “wetting transparency.” This discovery points out future application of graphene film at solid-liquid interfaces to serve as an electrical conducting layer or protective layer, whilenat the same time, preserving the wetting behavior of the original substrate.

Yunfeng Shi

Nikhik Koratkar

The top figure illustrates the atomic configuration of nanoscale droplets of water on bare copper to graphene-coated copper. The bottom figure shows the wetting angle transits smoothly from bare copper to graphite upon increasing the graphene coating layers.

recently published in Nature Materi-als (Nature Materials 11, 233–240 (2012) doi:10.1038/nmat3213) and Nano Letters (Nano Lett., 2012, 12 (9), pp 4523–4529 DOI: 10.1021/nl301639t), and featured in popular science and technology magazines and websites. For this work, Prof. Ramanath’s student Rutvik J. Mehta, won a graduate student award at the Materials Research Society meeting, and a prize in the NY State Business Plan competition. The three coin-ventors have co-founded a start-up company, ThermoAura Inc to scale-up and optimize these materials for applications.

Faculty Announcements

Linda Schadler - Named the Russell Sage Professor. Professor Schadler continues in her appointment as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering.

Dan Lewis - Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure

Robert Messler - Published his 6th book, Engineering Problem-Solv ing 101:Time-Tested and Timeless Techniques by Mc Graw-Hill Professional.

http://www.mhprofessional.com/product. php?isbn=0071799966&cat=113

Linda Schadler Dan Lewis Robert W. Messler, Jr

Schematic representation of the scalable synthesis used to obtain both n- and p-type bulk thermoelectric nanomaterials with high figures of merit.

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New Undergraduate Lab

The Department has added a new undergraduate lab which will be put in action beginning with the Spring 2013 semester. Students in Mechanical Properties II and Synthesis and Processing II will be the first classes to take advantage of this new space. The available equipment includes: Nikon LV150 industrial microscope with objective lens magnifications between 5x and 100x. A Nikon SMZ-1000 stereoscope zoom microscope equipped with double flex light for optical microscopy and analysis. Both microscopes have cameras and Omnimnet Capture software. A Shiamadzu DTG-60/60H Simultaneous Measuring Instrument which makes simultaneous measurements of thermogravimetry (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). This tool will also give the thermal properties of a sample including the transition temperature, melting point, and reaction

temperature. An Agilent Cary 60 Spectrophotometer for UV-VIS-NIR spectroscopy. This instrument will measure the properties of light of a specific portion of the spectromagnetic spectrum for the analysis of identifying materials. The last tool currently installed is a home built electrospinning system. This system will be used for producing ultra-fine fibres from a variety of materials including polymers, composites and ceramics.

Rensselaer and the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center have unveiled NanoSpace, an online “molecular theme park” populated with more than 25 games, activities, and animations to educate and excite young students about the world of atoms and molecules. Aimed at children in grades 5-8, NanoSpace is the latest platform from the Molecularium Project, which has been working to expand science literacy and awareness and excite young audiences of all ages to explore and understand the molecular nature of the world around them. Many NanoSpace games and activities feature the characters Oxy, Hydra, and Mel from the Molecularium animated movies Molecules to the MAX! and Riding Snowflakes. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and others, the project is a direct response to the challenge of inspiring more young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

(STEM). “Science literacy—in every capacity—has never before been so important to our nation,” said Richard W. Siegel, the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center. “We realize that not every kid wants to be a scientist, but learning the basics of

science—involving molecules and atoms—is critical to the careers that will be available in the next decade. When learning is fun, it increases a child’s capacity to absorb and retain knowledge. That’s why we are excited to unveil NanoSpace. Kids are interacting, exploring, and having a great time while learning about atoms and molecules, and they are not even realizing they’re learning.”

For more information on the Molecularium Project, visit www.molecularium.com and www.rpi.edu/magazine/march2009/stealth_education.html.

NanoSpace Educational Web Site Launched

Spotlight on Don van Steele

Upon receiving his AAS degree in Electronic Technology, Don van Steele, Technical Director of Instructional Labs, worked for local television station WMHT as an engineer. A highlight of his job was assisting in the system design and construction of their mobile and remote broadcasting facilities. Prior to joining Rensselaer, Don worked for General Electric in Schenectady, NY. While at GE he worked in the Materials & Processes Laboratory as an Instrumentation Specialist and in the Turbine Technology Laboratory as a Supervisor of the Mechanics of Materials Unit.

Don began his Rensselaer career, in what was then the Materials Engineering Department, in September of 1989 as a Senior Instrumentation Specialist. His job was to oversee the operations of the Structures and Properties lab course and assist faculty member David

Woodford with his research and student programs. Don has coauthored six journal papers with Prof. Woodford.

Over the years Don’s job has expanded several times to best use his many talents. He has directed our Mechanical Testing Laboratory for 18 years, working with students, postdocs and faculty across three schools and over ten departments, in addition to serving as a mainstay of our MSE teaching and research programs. Most recently, he has been appointed as Technical Director for our entire program of undergraduate laboratories. This involves working with our faculty to update and develop a world class set of integrated laboratories for our set of undergraduate core courses, as well as overseeing the logistics for the creation of our new Undergraduate Laboratory (see article above). This is a key initiative in establishing our undergraduate degree as one of the pre-eminent programs nationally.

Supporting the Problem Solvers of Tomorrow

Engineering a better world is a theme at Rensselaer, and our students have the skills and creativity to make it happen.They immerse themselves in research and study, excited about the possibilities of using their expertise to address issues of sustainability, energy, safety and other grand challenges facing humanity.

Support Faculty: Faculty are the university. They’re at the core of what we’re doing in the School of Engineering.

Support Students: An engineering education at Rensselaer opens doors. It enables our students to build a better world.

Support Programs: Program support allows the School of Engineering to create new academic programs, to upgrade and improve our teaching facilities, and to create new world class laboratories.

How to give:There are many ways to give to the School of Engineering. Contact us directly to answer your questions by calling Richard Graw, School of Engineering Chief Advancement Officer at 518-276-4868 or email him at grawr@rpi.edu. Your gift may provide you with federal and state income tax benefits. As you consider your gift, please be aware of the following income tax considerations when giving to Rensselaer’s School of Engineering. As always, you should consult a qualified tax pro-fessional for tax advice. Rensselaer has 501(c)(3) non-profit tax exempt status; our federal tax ID number is 14-1340095.

Please see our website for more informaiton: http://lamp3.server.rpi.edu/soe/support/how-to-give

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Please let us know what you are currently doing so we can include you in future newsletters. If you know of any MS&E alumni/ae who have not received this newsletter please send us their names and addresses, and we will add them to our mailing list.

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Please mail form to: Dana Chichester Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute MRC 102 110 8th St. Troy, NY 12180-3590

FAX: 518-276-8554, E-mail: chichd@rpi.edu