Title: Structural Alloy Design for Extreme Environments and Challenges to Sustainable Energy
Abstract: In response to the escalating threat of climate change, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced a series of ambitious Energy Earth Shot Initiatives. These target an 80% reduction in the cost of clean hydrogen by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This presentation will focus on two highlights from active research to address key materials challenges limiting the deployment of advanced power systems. The first is on efforts to address a critical and cross-cutting materials need, i.e., the development of structural alloys with substantially higher temperature tolerance than existing Ni-based superalloys, aimed at enabling more efficient gas turbines, smaller modular fission reactors, and first-generation commercial fusion reactor plasma containment. The second is a fundamental insight that led to the discovery of a predictive model for the maximum achievable strength in metals (including pure metals, dilute and concentrated alloys, and bulk metallic glasses) exclusively based on materials properties, with no fitting parameters, which is providing new insights for physics-guided computational design of materials.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Nicolas Argibay is a staff scientist and group leader at the US DOE Ames National Laboratory, in the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. His work focuses on developing materials and processing solutions for energy sustainability, with recent emphasis on the design of alloys and composites for use at extreme temperatures and in harsh environments. This work is in support of DOE Energy Earth Shot Initiatives, including the transition of power generation to green hydrogen, decarbonization of the industrial sector, increasing offshore wind energy production, and enabling next-generation fission and fusion energy sources. These efforts have led to discoveries including extremely wear resistant electrical contact alloys (highly stable nanocrystallinity via grain boundary engineering), design of high-entropy alloys to enable competitive engineering outcomes with metals additive manufacturing (near-net shaping), and fundamental insights about the ultimate strength of metals. He has produced 68 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h-index 30), 8patents, and is the recipient of an R&D 100 award, the 31st HENAAC award, and two FLC awards for innovation.