Professor Chris Race

School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering

UKAEA Chair in Fusion Materials

Royal Society University Research Fellow

Henry Royce Institute Research Area Lead for Modelling and Simulation

Co-Director EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Developing National Capability for Materials 4.0

Christopher.Race@sheffield.ac.uk

Sir Robert Hadfield Building

Full contact details

Professor Chris Race
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD

Profile

Professor Chris Race is the UKAEA Chair in Fusion Materials and a Royal Society University Research Fellow within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield. His research group uses the tools of atomistic simulation to investigate the behaviour of a variety of materials and material evolution processes.

Before Chris joined Sheffield in December 2023, he was a Dalton Research Fellow and then Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Materials at the University of Manchester. Before that, he spent three years in the Department of Computational Materials Design of the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research (Eisenforschung) (MPIE) in Dusseldorf Germany, latterly as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. Chris completed his PhD in 2010, in the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, under the supervision of Adrian Sutton and Matthew Foulkes.

"I am a physicist by training and a materials scientist by inclination. I am attracted to materials science by the links it draws between the behaviour of real materials - things we experience and use in our everyday macroscopic lives - and what happens in the microscopic world of atoms and electrons. Materials science involves the application of fundamental theories of physics to solve real-world problems. As a bonus, these problems are often extremely complex, involving a hierarchy of processes across a range of length and time scales. To model them we need to use a broad range of tools, each with its own strengths and weaknesses."

Research interests

My work uses computer simulations to understand why materials behave the way that they do. Much of the behaviour of real materials in our everyday lives originates at the scale of atoms, propagating upwards through the complex hierarchical structure of the material. For example, the useful lifetime of a component in a fusion reactor depends ultimately on the way fast neutrons from the fusion reaction rearrange the atoms in the crystal structure. By understanding the behaviour of atoms via simulations, we can help to steer the development of improved materials, better suited to meet the challenges faced by society.

Key research interests:

Microstructural evolution in nuclear materials
Electronic effects in irradiation damage
Mechanisms and kinetics of grain boundary migration

Publications

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Journal articles

Livera ER, Christofidou KA, Miller JR, Chechik L, Ryan D, Shrive J & Todd I (2024) Microstructural control of LPBF Inconel 718 through post processing of intentionally placed AM discontinuity distributions. Materialia, 36, 102163-102163.
Markanday JFS, Christofidou KA, Miller JR, Livera ER, Jones NG, Pickering EJ, Li W, Pardhi Y, Jones CN & Stone HJ (2023) The microstructural evolution of CM247LC manufactured through laser powder bed fusion. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, 54(5), 1758-1775. View this article in WRRO
Tse MCH, Livera ER & Christofidou KA () Metallurgical developments in steam-methane reformer tube alloys. Materials Science and Technology.

Conference proceedings papers

Atkins C, Chahid Y, Lister G, Tuck R, Kotlewski R, Snell RM, Livera ER, Faour M, Deffley R, Todd I , Shipley J et al (2024) Targeting low surface roughness for 3D printed aluminium mirrors using a hot isostatic press. Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation VI, 16 June 2024 - 22 June 2024.

Preprints

Atkins C, Chahid Y, Lister G, Tuck R, Kotlewski R, Snell RM, Livera ER, Faour M, Todd I, Deffley R , Shipley J et al (2024) Targeting low micro-roughness for 3D printed aluminium mirrors using a hot isostatic press, arXiv.

Teaching activities: MAT4900/6900 Advanced Reactor Systems