Evaluation of Surfactant-stabilized Nanocrystalline Metallic Materials

What are the key technical challenges? The materials will be brittle and the microstructural features will be ultrafine. Generating valid data from mechanical testing and quantitative metallurgical analyses will be difficult. What is your approach/research plan? Procure NC-Cr and NC-W sheet materials from Veloxint Corp. Use PFIB to perform quantitative microstructural analyses Use ASTM specifications for ceramics to perform tensile, toughness and bending tests Correlate properties with microstructural characteristics What are the innovative aspects (how is this different than what others are doing in industry, academia, government)? Exploring nanocrystalline materials that are 3-5x stronger than traditional steels, and scaled-up to dimensions suitable for structural applications.