Scientists at Northeastern University, Boston, Mass., introduce a new cost- and energy-efficient computational model for designing alloys that factors in material defects.
Continue reading
SkyWater Technology, Blooington, Minn., completed its acquisition of Infineon Technologies AG’s 200 mm semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas (“Fab 25”), adding approximately 400,000 wafer starts per year in foundry capacity, to enhance its advanced technology services.
Continue reading
Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee are leveraging advanced manufacturing techniques, such as Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) Powder Metallurgy and Additive Manufacturing, to produce parts weighing over 4,500 kg. ORNL highlights the urgent need for these large-scale components across various sectors, including aerospace, defense, nuclear, oil, gas, renewables, and construction. This demand is particularly pressing in the US, where traditional manufacturing methods like casting and forging have declined and moved overseas, leading to supply-chain shortages.
Senior research scientists Jason Mayeur and Soumya Nag are hoping to add Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), hybrid manufacturing, in-situ monitoring and advanced computational modeling to HIP technology to create molds faster and more accurately whilst leveraging the PM technology American manufacturers may be more acquainted with.
“PM-HIP is a vital pathway for diversifying the supply chain for producing large-scale metal parts that are becoming more difficult to source via conventional means,” Mayeur explained. “The technology is of particular interest to the nuclear and hydroelectric industrial sectors, as well as the Department of Defense.”
In contrast with traditional casting and forging techniques, PM-HIP involves fabricating pre-formed, hollow molds for each large-scale component and filling them with metal powder. Once the additively manufactured mold (aka a ‘can’ or ‘capsule’) receives an initial seal, any gas remaining inside is pumped out. Then, a more permanent hermetic seal is applied.
At this point, the capsule is heated and pressurized in prescribed cycles within a Hot Isostatic Press (essentially a pressurized furnace). Without melting, these cycles facilitate the consolidation of the metal powder into the required shape in a process exchange of heat and pressure known as solid-state bonding. When bonding is complete, acid leaching or machining is used to remove the exterior can, revealing the intended part.
Jason Mayeur works in the Deposition Science and Technology Group at ORNL, where he applies his knowledge in computational solid mechanics to manufacturing challenges. His two-decade research career began with the use of computational models to understand the relationships between materials microstructure and performance. He has since segued into the analysis of the structural material performance of metals and alloys.
In this arena, Mayeur develops theory, writes code to implement his theories, and then performs simulations of solids under various loading conditions to determine their suitability for use in a variety of applications. In short, Mayeur’s code can be used to improve the PM-HIP process, thus making it a more attractive alternative to traditional casting and forging.
Soumya Nag, Mayeur’s colleague at ORNL, works in the Materials Science and Technology Division, applying his own two decades of research experience in materials and manufacturing. Nag is a metallurgist with expertise in evaluating lightweight, high-temperature structural alloys fabricated via conventional and advanced manufacturing techniques.
“Jason is an expert in predictive modeling of deformation characteristics of Hot Isostatic Pressing canisters. I am more involved in the experimental side of things. Jason and I complement each other, and really, our two efforts are very much intertwined and critical toward the overall success of the task,” Nag said.
Nag’s research centers on the processing and materials science of HIP capsule fabrication, using various additive manufacturing techniques and assessing the quality of the resulting component parts.
“Additive Manufacturing offers unique design flexibility, which, combined with the reliability of PM-HIP, can pave the path toward precise manufacturing of large-scale, custom and complex, energy-related parts while also taking advantage of multi-material builds,” he explained.
Nag collaborates with Mayeur to design and perform experiments that characterize the metal powder material’s behavior and its mechanical properties in pursuit of a better, more accurate build while providing the necessary material property inputs for Mayeur’s computational models.
Mayeur’s work targets many technological challenges posed by the PM-HIP process, striving for quality and consistency in geometry to achieve dimensional accuracy at a very large scale. One challenge is shrinkage. During PM-HIP, the volume of metal powder within the can shrinks by approximately 30%, but not uniformly.
To address these inconsistencies, Mayeur’s computational models work to predict how the shrinkage occurs for different part geometries and capsule designs. This is an iterative process that occurs after initial capsule design, using the simulation results as a guide to modify the final design.
For more information: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Image: This additively manufactured PM-HIP will be used to create an impeller for a hydropower impeller, demonstrating a new approach for creating large-scale clean energy components. (Courtesy Carlos Jones/ORNL, US DoE)
Six undergraduates at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) have been developing a process to accelerate the creation of diamond membranes, which are crucial for hosting qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information. This work is part of the research at Q-NEXT, a U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne National Laboratory. During their 10-week internship at Argonne, the students wrote software to automate a labor-intensive part of diamond-membrane production, finding the experience both challenging and rewarding.
Their work is enabled through Break Through Tech Chicago, an initiative that provides women and nonbinary people with internship opportunities in science and technology. Argonne staff scientist Nazar Delegan, a Q-NEXT collaborator, and UIC professor Dale Reed led the student team.
Quantum information technologies are expected to revolutionize areas such as logistics, drug development and navigation in the coming decades. Diamond membranes are a new material for hosting qubits, the core of quantum devices. The membranes have desirable properties for quantum information processing, and they open paths for integrating quantum materials with current information technologies.
Scientists are investigating the most effective ways to fabricate diamond membranes. One of the production steps — a specific process in the etching stage — requires up to 60 minutes of continual human effort and supervision.
The task before the UIC students: Put that etching process on the path to full automation.
“There are factors that can disrupt the etching process. Someone has to constantly be checking that it’s being done right,” said Fernanda Villalpando, an information decision sciences senior and the group’s project manager. “So we worked to automate it.”
By demonstrating proof of concept, the students laid the groundwork for the procedure so that future researchers can scale it up to industry production levels.
The membranes are created by embedding a layer of graphite between two layers of diamond. The thick bottom diamond layer serves as a platform. The tissue-thin top layer — 100 to 1,000 nanometers thin, a hundred to a thousand times thinner than a sheet of paper — is the diamond membrane. Scientists use electrical probes to chemically etch away the graphite beneath the membrane, which can then be peeled off and integrated into a quantum device.
Currently, a human must watch over the roughly hour-long etching process to ensure its successful execution. But following the UIC group’s work, researchers will one day be able to say goodbye to human-supervised etching.
Building on image detection software called Open CV as part of the Python programming language, the students created a program to teach the computer to visually assess and respond to the etching process. Is there a bubble trapped between layers? An unexpected obstruction? With the UIC group’s program, the computer knows whether to stop the etch, continue or work around it.
“That way, the scientists don’t have to be there to push the ‘off’ button, for example,” Villalpando said. “Our program stops it for them.”
As the ones spearheading the procedure, the team had no blueprint for how to proceed. They quickly realized they’d have to draw heavily on their computer science knowledge, hunt for relevant documentation and even pick up the phone to call the device’s manufacturer for minutiae not captured in the literature.
“We had to reach out to the company. It was a little frustrating, because how were we going to do the rest of the work if we’re having trouble communicating with the devices?” said Claudia Jimenez, a computer science junior. “But once we got that part, we had the persistence and resilience to keep going, and made a lot of progress in two or three weeks. We kept going and looked for different resources to accomplish something that none of us had ever done before.”
In fact, it was something no one had done before. Currently, only a select few groups in the world are creating diamond-membrane qubit platforms.
“I love being in a space where everyone is excited about it,” Villalpando said. “I’ve been in rooms where people do the work that they do all the time. It’s not new, and there’s only one way to do it. But we get to be creative and think, ‘How can we solve this?’”
For Q-NEXT, the group’s development of a technical procedure from scratch was a crucial contribution to quantum materials fabrication. For the students, it was part of the real-world work of experimenting in a laboratory.
The Chicago Quantum Exchange honored the group’s work with the Best Undergraduate Student Poster Award at the Chicago Quantum Summit in October.
The UIC team was also excited to be part of game-changing research that could have impacts across so many areas of everyday life.
“Quantum applies to so many different applications and fields and industries. I would possibly like to be a part of that. It was nice to hear from actual professionals in the field giving an explanation about what quantum is, how it can be applied and how we’re actually going to do it,” Jimenez said.
For more information: Q-NEXT
Image: UIC students work at the Argonne Quantum Foundry through the Break Through Tech Chicago program, helping automate an important step in the production of diamond membranes for qubits. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
Researchers have developed a deep learning-based method that enhances the speed and accuracy of identifying and classifying two-dimensional (2D) materials using Raman spectroscopy. Traditional Raman analysis is slow and requires manual interpretation, but this new approach accelerates the development and analysis of 2D materials, which are crucial for electronics and medical technologies. Lead researcher Yaping Qi from Tohoku University explains that their generative model improves limited and unevenly distributed spectral data, effectively filling in the gaps.
“This method provides a robust and automated solution for high-precision analysis of 2D materials,” summarizes Qi, “The integration of deep learning techniques holds significant promise for materials science research and industrial quality control, where reliable and rapid identification is critical.”
The study presents the first application of DDPM in Raman spectral data generation, paving the way for more efficient, automated spectroscopy analysis. This approach enables precise material characterization even when experimental data is scarce or difficult to obtain. Ultimately, this can allow for research done in the lab to transform into a real product that consumers can buy in stores into a much smoother process.
For more information: Tohoku University
