Los Alamos National LaboratoryFUTURE: Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes
An Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences

Thrust 1: Compositional Heterogeneities

Materials often include multiple alloying elements, introduced to enhance properties such as corrosion resistance, mechanical strength, and radiation tolerance.

CONTACT US  

  • Director
  • Blas Uberuaga
  • LANL
  • (505) 667-9105
  • Email
  • Deputy Director
  • Peter Hosemann
  • UC Berkeley
  • (510) 717-5752
  • Email
thrust-1-composition.png

Materials often include multiple alloying elements, introduced to enhance properties such as corrosion resistance, mechanical strength, and radiation tolerance. When created, these elements are often distributed uniformly across the material, but both irradiation and corrosion can move those elements around, causing them to concentrate in some regions or deplete in others. Not only does this change the properties of the material, but it can significantly modify how defects migrate through the crystal. Some regions become more favorable for the defect, acting as traps, while others might be less favorable and become barriers for motion. 

 

In Thrust 1, we study how these compositional heterogeneities evolve with irradiation and/or corrosion and how that changing chemical distribution impacts the mechanisms that ultimately govern the evolution of irradiation and corrosion.