Symposium CP04-Interfacial Science and Engineering—Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Chemistry

Interface-dominated materials offer a number of unique opportunities for materials design and optimization. The key to the future development in this area is a detailed understanding of fundamental interfacial phenomena. In particular, the significance of both internal grain and phase boundaries as well as free surfaces becomes more dominant in technological applications when a significant reduction of system size or scale of microstructure is desired to tune properties. This symposium will bring together researchers from a wide range of backgrounds including theoretical, experimental, modeling, and characterization in order to communicate recent developments pertaining to interface-dominated processes in all states of matter (solids, liquids, gases) and discuss the future of the field. Improved descriptions of grain boundary thermodynamics, chemistry, and structure are targeted, to allow for fundamental advancements in predictive capabilities and materials design. Novel improvements in the areas of computational modeling across multiple length-scales and experimental characterization of interfaces are also sought, as are synergistic combinations of such techniques. Finally, processing routes that enable the control and optimization of interface structure and the networks that these interfaces form are desired.

Topics will include:

Thermodynamics and chemistry (i.e., segregation, adsorption, phase transformation, energies, etc.)
Kinetics; morphological and re-construction processes, such as grain growth, coarsening, faceting, etc.
Local interface structure (structure-property relationships)
Experimental assessment and observation of interface evolution in response to various external stimuli (thermal, stress, electrochemistry, etc.)
Atomic-scale calculations of local interface structure and associated properties (energy, mobility, etc.)
Mesoscale modeling and computational thermodynamics of processes driven by interfaces
Characterization techniques to probe interfacial properties (atomic structure, chemical composition, etc.) and their relation to material properties at the macroscale
Development of processing techniques to obtain and control experimental production of desired interfaces (grain boundary engineering, deformation twinning, etc.)

Invited Speakers:

Shen Dillon (University of Illinois)
Andrea Hodge (University of Southern California, USA)
Mark Asta (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Ben Britton (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
Ricardo H.R. Castro (University of California, Davis, USA)
Ann Chiaramonti Debay (National Institute for Standards and Technology, USA)
Dan Gianola (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Martin Harmer (Lehigh University, USA)
Eric Homer (Brigham Young University, USA)
Jeff Hoyt (McMaster University, Canada)
Brian Laird (University of Kansas, USA)
Emmanuelle Marquis (University of Michigan, USA)
Srikanth Patala (North Carolina State University, USA)
Gwenaelle Proust (University of Sydney, Australia)
Nikolas Provatas (McGill University, Canada)
Eugen Rabkin (Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)
Gang Sha (Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China)
David Srolovitz (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Mitra Taheri (Drexel University, USA)
Jörg Weißmüller (Technische Universität Hamburg, Germany)