Faculty Member: Lan “Samantha” Li
To control the quality of aerosol jet-printed materials, a fundamental understanding of process-structure-property relationships is required. Extensive experimental work has been conducted to address this relationship. However, the uncertain quality of the final products still induces a large barrier to the wide industrial adoption of the advanced manufacturing techniques. The reason for that includes a lack of understanding of the physical mechanisms and key factors governing the fabrication processes. Such complicated process consists of many physical phenomena across different length and time scales. To support experimental observation of those phenomena, multiscale modeling techniques can facilitate the comprehensive study of the printing process, from first-principles modeling to molecular dynamics, and from microscale phase field to finite element modeling.
Student Research Experience: Working in collaboration with INL’s Computational Microstructure Science Group, students will apply multiscale modeling methods, combining first-principles, molecular dynamics, phase field and finite element modeling, to reveal process-structure-property relationships during printing, particularly the effects of temperature, time, ink particle size and other relevant processing factors. The printed materials will be selected for in-pile nuclear sensors with high-temperature and irradiation resistance.