Materials Science

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Experimental and Computation Facilities for Materials Research

The Cornell Materials Science Center proposes to transition their state-of-the-art computing facility to Intel/NT workstations in support of experimental and computational research in a broad range of disciplines, including solid state physics, chemistry and materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering. Four staff within the center will work closely with faculty and graduate students to develop the new network of Intel systems to eventually replace the existing Unix network. This new computational power will enable research groups to make substantial progress on existing problems, as well as begin to tackle even more challenging problems. In addition, the paradigm shift from Unix to NT will provide critical training for graduate students, who increasingly face non-Unix environments in the industrial workplace.

The Materials Science Center computing facility has been an ongoing research tool for over 50 research groups at Cornell University for more than 20 years. The research supported by the facility has included computational and experimental programs that have continually taxed the processing resources of the largest available computers (and, of course, the computational needs grow even faster than Moore’s law!). Throughout this time, the facility has provided a stable computational environment allowing the research staff and students to focus on the research problems, and not the details of computer management. Computational needs are dictated by the research programs, but the staff is available to facilitate individual requirements – developing specialized software or interfacing hardware as required.

The ongoing projects supported by the Materials Science Computing facility extend across nearly all disciplines of materials research. While it is impossible to discuss all 60+ projects that would utilize these new resources, the examples below of computationally demanding projects (especially those of particular interest to Intel) provide a glimpse of the research breadth in the center.

E. Bodenschatz (Physics), working in the field of turbulent fluid dynamics, tracks high speed particles over large distances using silicon strip detectors developed at Cornell by Professor J. Alexander.

C. Franck’s (Physics) group is searching for weakly correlated motion in the midst of intense thermal agitation (colloidal suspensions).

E.P. Giannelis (Materials Science & Engineering) is using Monte Carlo simulation techniques to model complex fluids, such as lubricants, adhesives, insulating layers, and electronic packaging layers, which are poorly understood at the nanometer scale.

W. Ho and B. Cooper (Physics) use scanning tunneling probe techniques to study the time evolution of surface structures and chemical reactions on single molecules.

H. Hui (Theoretical & Applied Mechanics) is developing a multi-scale simulation model of the adhesion between two elastomers whose surfaces, though nominally flat, have undulations or asperities of small amplitudes. Understanding and controlling these adhesion problems is a major issue in computer packaging and microelectronics processing.

J. Parpia (Physics) is investigating the novel behavior of superfluids in extremely porous glasses called aerogels which, because of their intricate fractal geometry, produce unexpected phase transitions.

W. Sachse (Theoretical & Applied Mechanics) is involved in non-destructive testing and evaluation of materials, such as thin polymer coatings, using ultrasonic techniques.

M. Thompson (Materials Science & Engineering) and P. Clancy (Chemical Engineering) study and model the diffusion of impurities (B, As, Sb, Bi, In) in Si in support of sub-100 nm device geometries.

A. Zehnder (Theoretical & Applied Mechanics) is similarly involved in understanding the fundamental fracture processes at a materials interface. This work has important industrial applications in areas such as: (1) metal-ceramic composites and laminated structures; (2) bone-tissue and other bio-mechanical systems; (3) debonding in the computer chip industry; (4) interfaces in the micro-electronic devices (MEMS); and (5) thin films.

Participants

Michael O. Thompson, Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Carl Franck, Associate Professor, Department of Physics

Last modified on: 07/30/99