Undergraduate Research in Characterization of Advanced Materials
EMSL Project ID
2006
Abstract
During the summer of 1999 the group of students, as part of an NSF REU summer program and a 1 credit course, visited PNNL to see first hand some equipment which is not available (or is significantly less modern) at WSU. We would like to continue this relationship, and have the REU students for 2000 visit to use the same instrumentation. We have three projects which are particularly applicable to these instruments. A study of metal matrix ceramics between mullite and aluminum requires use of the in situ fracture capabilities of the AES system to document any interfacial reactons which occur during heat treatments (and may strengthen the interface of the composite). The second experiment would utilize XPS for analyzing the interface between tungsten and glass for carbon contamination. Current adhesion testing indicates that there may be variations in the purity of the interface in these thin film systems which leads to decreased interfacial fracture toughness. Finally, a series of Cu-Ni multilayers is being grown to study links between multilayer spacing and mechanical properties. A non-destructive testing method such as RBS will allow the students to examine the mechanical properties using nanoindentation after measuing the thickenss and compositional variations in the multilayers.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2000-07-10
End Date
2000-12-31
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members