Interfaces are ubiquitous in nature, and play an important role in materials science. The Interface Dynamics and Energetics of Alloys Laboratory (or IDEAs Lab for short) focuses on understanding, predicting and controlling interfaces during processing and usage in order to improve material properties. We explore a variety of materials systems, fundamental phenomena and material properties through a variety of computational and experimental techniques.

Current Material Systems under investigation includes bond coat materials such as NiAl with PGM or reactive element additions, oxide nanoparticle suspensions, silicides, MAX/MXenes and exchange coupled magnets.

We study a variety of fundamental phenomena such as synthesis of these materials by solidification and sintering, nanopatterning and self-assembly, phase transformations, microstructure evolution and grain boundary engineering, high temperature oxidation, exchange coupling mechanisms.

Innovative research approaches calls for novel research methods and technique development, with a focus on combining computational approaches with physical infrastructure. Specifically, we also work on developing materials informatics, Cellular Automata and in-situ measurements methods in order to investigate the interfacial phenomena in these materials.