Events Calendar

AME Seminar

Speaker: Dennis Kim, UCLA

Talk Title: Finding Order in Disorder: Atomic-Scale Understanding of Phase Transformations

Abstract: Crystalline imperfections and their dynamics are essential in phase transformations and structure-property relationships in materials. Classical methods for determining atomic structures average over many unit cells. As a result, such methods cannot correctly capture atomic-level information on amorphous packing, point defects, chemical ordering, strain, and interfaces. I will first present my recent work extending atomic electron tomography (AET) to overcome the limitations of conventional methods to obtain 3D atomic packing information with picometer precision in amorphous materials. With every atom accounted for, we can understand how atoms in amorphous solids arrange in short- to medium-range order and the implications of these findings for metallic glasses. I will then discuss other systems where chemical ordering and crystalline imperfections of point defects, strain, and interfaces play an essential role in phase transformations and atomic-scale structure-property relationships. I will also present recent efforts in developing an electron thermal diffuse scattering method to determine spatially resolved lattice dynamics. The diffuse patterns are highly sensitive to differences in phonon energies. Combining high-reciprocal space sampling and high-dynamic-range imaging methods, and machine-learned interatomic potential-based dynamical simulations, we are able to observe temperature-dependent soft phonon mode dynamics and nuclear quantum effects. These findings have far-reaching implications in understanding heat transport. Finally, I will show how feedback loops powered by experimental coordinates with picometer accuracy, scattering spectroscopy, and ab initio computational methods will guide future materials discovery and design.

Biography: Dennis Kim is a research scientist at the University of California Los Angeles and holds a PhD in Materials Science from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a STROBE postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles. His research background is in materials thermodynamics and understanding phase transformations through state-of-the-art scattering, imaging, and quantum mechanical computational techniques. He is interested in developing and optimizing materials for various applications in thermal, energy, and quantum sciences through a fundamental understanding from the atom up.

Host: AME Department

More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95805178776?pwd=aEtTRnQ2MmJ6UWE4dk9UMG9GdENLQT09

Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 406

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95805178776?pwd=aEtTRnQ2MmJ6UWE4dk9UMG9GdENLQT09

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Tessa Yao

Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/