Teams Webinar Registration

Dr. Christopher Schuh—Dean & Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science John G. Searle Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

“Unlocking Shape Memory in Ceramics with Microstructure Design, Lattice Engineering, and Data Science”

Abstract: The prospect of ceramics that can deform and recover their shape is both tantalizing and increasingly plausible, thanks to efforts to better understand and engineer the martensitic transformation. This talk will review our work on a new class of shape memory materials based on ZrO2 ceramics. Compared with shape memory alloys, such “shape memory ceramics” (SMCs) are stronger, have higher work output, operate at higher temperatures, and have improved environmental resistance. However, martensitic transformation in ceramics is usually associated with catastrophic cracking. We focus on methods of mitigating transformation damage, which is largely associated with surfaces and interfaces in SMCs. First, the judicious introduction of free surfaces and elimination of grain boundaries in “oligocrystalline” structures has been found to substantially reduce cracking and enable shape memory properties in a variety of form factors, including particles, pillars, powder packings, foams, and even some bulk forms. Second, tuning the crystallographic mismatch of the transformation by composition control also permits reduction of mismatch stresses, suppressing cracking and lowering the transformation hysteresis dramatically. Using these basic physical principles, we apply tools of alloy design including computational thermodynamics and data science to design new, optimized SMCs, opening a vista to deformable and shape-programmable ceramics.

Biography: Christopher A. Schuh is the dean of the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University where he is also John G. Searle Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Schuh was previously POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served as Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2020. Schuh earned his BS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and PhD from Northwestern. His honors include being named a fellow of ASM International and the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, as well as a MacVicar Fellow of MIT. He is also a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors.