Achievement

A team involving IGERT Advisor Zhang has developed ways to produce alloys with high strength and high electrical conductivity. While this is a major challenge, such materials are needed for electrical power lines and the semiconductor industry. Nanotwins, a structure modification on the nanometer scale, provide a unique way to attack this challenge. This team, including collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory, developed two ways to produce such structures. The first method involves high-rate magnetron sputtering, producing films and multilayers to have the desired combination of structural, mechanical, and electrical properties. In as-yet unpublished work, this team has shown that mechanical strain of Cu-Ge alloys provides an additional means to achieve such a structure. IGERT trainee Dan Bufford has been producing and characterizing the latter new materials, which could dramatically impact the understanding of twin-enabled strengthening in electrical conducting metals.