A workshop on the future of research in the Metals and Metallic Nanostructures field will be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara on June 13th and 14th, 2012. This workshop will identify important new research trends, assess research activities in terms of national priorities, examine international competitiveness in this field, and evaluate workforce development needs. Experts from diverse backgrounds will be invited to participate in this event. The workshop will produce a report that will be published and made available for public dissemination.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:
A workshop on the future of research in the Metals and Metallic Nanostructures field will be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara on June 13th and 14th, 2012. A variety of experts from diverse backgrounds in this field will be invited to participate. The workshop will produce a report that will be published and made available for public dissemination. This report will be of use in guiding the future of advanced research in this field.
During the next decade, fundamental research on metals and metallic nanostructures (MMN) has the potential to continue transforming metals science into innovative materials, devices, and systems. A workshop to identify emerging and potentially transformative research areas in MMN was held on June 13 and 14th, 2012 at the University of California Santa Barbara. There were 47 attendees at the workshop, representing a broad range of academic institutions, industry and government laboratories. The participants and findings of the workshop have been published: C.A. Handwerker and T.M. Pollock, "Emerging Science and Research Opportunities for Metals and Metallic Nanostructures", JOM 66, 7, 1321 – 1341, (2014). The MMN workshop aimed to identify significant research trends, scientific fundamentals and recent breakthroughs that can enable new or enhanced MMN performance, either alone or in a more complex materials system, for a wide range of applications. Additionally, the role that MMN research can play in high-priority R&D areas such as the US Materials Genome Initiative, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative and other similar initiatives that exist internationally was assessed. The workshop also addressed critical issues related to Materials Research Instrumentation and the Cyberinfrastructure for materials science research and education, as well as STEM workforce development, with emphasis on the US but with an appreciation that similar challenges and opportunities for the materials community exist internationally. A central theme of the Workshop was that research in MMN has provided and will continue to provide societal benefits through the coupling of experiment, theory, and simulation to link atomistic, nanoscale, microscale, and mesoscale phenomena across time scales for an ever widening range of applications. Within this overarching theme, the workshop participants identified emerging research opportunities that are categorized and described in more detail in the the publication in terms of: 3-D and 4-D Materials Science Structure Evolution and the Challenge of Heterogeneous and Multicomponent Systems The Science Base for Property Prediction Across the Length Scales Nanoscale Phenomena at Surfaces – Experiment, Theory, Simulation Prediction and Control of the Morphology, Microstructure, and Properties of "Bulk" Nanostructured Metals Functionality and Control of Materials Far from Equilibrium Hybrid and Multifunctional Materials Assemblies Materials Discovery and Design: Enhancing the Theory – Simulation - Experiment Loop Challenges and opportunities for the materials community in the areas of instrumentation, cyberinfrastructure, education and workforce development are also discussed in the publication.
