Summer School

2010 Summer School: Atomic-level Response of Materials to Irradiation

The school aims to inform and educate students in the area of radiation effects in materials, with emphasis on atomic-level phenomena. The one-week long curriculum will cover a range of topics, with emphasis on nuclear energy materials:

• Fundamentals of bonding, crystal structures, defects and interfaces,
•  Atomistic modeling methods,
• Materials characterization methods (electron microscopy, x-ray and neutron scattering),
• Sources of energetic particles, physics of ion stopping, collision cascades and radiation-induced defect formation, defect diffusion and clustering.
• Influence of radiation damage on the structure, dimensional changes and properties (radiation-induced phase transformation, hardening, embrittlement, creep, voids, swelling, etc).

The school will also include a half-day excursion, and evening public lectures in nuclear energy with focus on the role of materials research.

The school is organized by the three Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC’s), respectively, at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. EFRC’s are sponsored by the US, DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. School syllabus and additional information will be posted in the coming weeks at:  http://cmime.lanl.gov

Summer School flyer and application information available here (pdf).

Description

The Materials Design Summer School is being established to engage and interact with the top undergraduate students in the country. Within the Materials Design Summer School, employed students will receive technical training/lectures, professional development seminars, and laboratory experience with LANL staff and external mentors. Students will explore specific topical areas and work in small teams, and overall, the projects are integrated into a larger team effort, thus exposing students to technical efforts and teaming exercises. At the end of the summer, students will be expected to present their work in a technical forum.

Focus Material

The 2007 Materials Design Summer School will be focused on AuZn. This fascinating material displays shape-memory behavior and accompanying martensite transformation at low temperature (Ms = 60K) allowing the separation of diffusional and non-diffusional transformation effects. Recent measurements on AuZn have called into question fundamental distinctions between 1st and 2nd order transformations as well as provided insight into martensitic precursor effects. Student projects on this material will include processing (solidification, thermo-mechanical and single crystal growth) , characterization (microstructure, thermodynamic, and mechanical properties), and first principles modeling, cross-cutting a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines.

Duration and Location:

The Materials Design Summer school program will last nine weeks June 11 - August 10, 2007. The summer school will be held at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, NM.