Dr. Marie Charpagne—Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Urbana-Champaign

"Metastable alloys by design: designing alloys for additive manufacturing by leveraging out-of-equilibrium microstructure states"

Abstract: Metal Additive Manufacturing is revolutionizing the way we conceptualize materials synthesis, performance, and life cycle, opening a broad design landscape for novel compositions that were previously unattainable. The extreme heating and cooling rates associated with additive manufacturing give rise to microstructures that are far from equilibrium. Some of these metastable microstructures exhibit an unprecedented combination of strength and ductility. While these have been discovered rather coincidentally until now, my group aims to leverage metastable microstructures as an asset to achieve superior combinations of properties. In this presentation, I will discuss how we can leverage reactions and transformations occurring during printing, to design novel alloys for additive manufacturing. Through the case examples of solid-state transformations and phase separation in the liquid state, I will show how new microstructures can be engineered, tailored in terms of grain size, grain boundary network, and deformation modes. Their impact on mechanical properties (strengthening, work hardening) and environmental resistance (corrosion, surface treatments) will be presented. 

Biography: Marie A. Charpagne is an assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She graduated with a PhD in Materials Science from Mines ParisTech in 2017, focusing on thermo-mechanical processing. Before joining UIUC in Fall 2021, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California in Santa Barbara, where she developed new techniques in correlative and 3D electron microscopy. Her research now leverages core concepts in physical metallurgy, rapid solidification and micro-mechanics, to design new alloys that adapt dynamically to extreme environments. She received her NSF CAREER award as well as the ACS New investigator award in 2023, the TMS Early career faculty fellow award and the DOE Early Career Faculty Award both in 2025. She is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles in major journals in physical metallurgy.