The Nanomaterials and Computational Materials Science research group is engaged in demand-driven basic research activities for various engineering applications. The main objectives of our research are to design and fabricate metallic nanomaterials based on considerations of its thermodynamic and kinetic stabilities, and to explore the structure-property correlations of nanomaterials.
We have developed a series of models to understand the thermal stability of nanocrystalline materials and the phase stability of multi-component alloys in terms of their microstructural evolution and phase transformation behavior. The critical conditions for rapid discontinuous grain growth and phase transition of nanomaterials can thus be determined. Also, we discovered that the lattice site occupancy of nanocrystalline materials can be modulated by tailoring the grain size. Such rule has been successfully applied in Mn-N based alloys, where unique zero thermal expansion (ZTE) effect was achieved. The obtained ZTE temperature window still represents the highest level of this kind of materials in the world.
With the guidance of calculations by the stabilization models, we proposed micro-mechanisms for controlling the grain size and the phase constitution of metallic nanomaterials. Thereby, a variety of methods for controllable fabrication of nanomaterials with stable and high performance have been developed in our group, such as nano rare-earth metals and alloys, cemented carbides coatings and bulk materials. The novel techniques facilitated the establishment of the rare-earth database, which for the first time included the nanoscale effects on the structure and performance. The nanostructuring techniques also promoted the industrialization and high-end applications of the nanocrystalline cemented carbide materials. The developed cemented carbide products have been applied to many important engineering fields including aerospace, coal mining, steel metallurgy, power generation and precision machining. The service performance and lifetime of the key mechanical components in real-world applications are remarkably improved.
In recent years, our group has been granted more than 40 research projects including the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, China National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Key Program of Natural Science Foundation of Beijing, and projects supported by some companies. For the academic contributions, we have been awarded several provincial- and ministerial-level awards including the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award, the second prize of Natural Science Awards (twice), and the second prize of Technological Invention Award. We have more than 70 authorized invention patents and 4 software copyrights. Moreover, more than 270 SCI-indexed articles have been published in the peer-reviewed international journals including Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Angew, Nanoscale and Acta Materialia. We have given over 60 invited talks at academic conferences. In addition, the students of our group have won more than 20 awards including the Excellent Doctoral Thesis Award of Beijing, the first prize of Beijing Excellent Academic Paper Award for Young Scientist and the Best Oral Presentation Award at international and domestic academic conferences.
We currently have over 30 members including staff, postdocs and graduate students working with us. Professor Xiaoyan Song, as the group leader, has received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and has been appointed as the Distinguished Professor. She was also approved by several programs such as the Great Wall scholars of Beijing, the leading talent of Beijing High Innovation Plan, and the excellent talent for outstanding contributions to Beijing.
Our research mainly focuses on the stability of nanomaterials, nanocrystalline rare-earth materials, nano- / ultrafine- / coarse-grained cemented carbides, and computational material science and its applications in materials design.
