Enhancing Mechanical Properties of Nanostructured Materials with Interfacial Films

Nanostructured materials are a category of materials comprised of nanometer-scale crystals which exhibit order of magnitude higher strength when compared to their traditional counterparts with larger crystal sizes. The application of nanostructured materials has been limited due to seemingly inherent low ductility and high-temperature instability. The inventors at UCI have developed a nanostructured material that simultaneously exhibits increased ductility, strength, and thermal stability by the incorporation of amorphous intergranular films. Michael Harpen mharpen@uci.edu 949-824-5321