Research Interests

Most alloys were developed by using traditional matrix experimental approaches to select the alloying compositions, which was time-consuming and not cost-effective. We are going to focus on combining CALPHAD method (Thermo-Calc), machine learning with experimental vilidation to efficiently explore suitable alloy compositions, thereby desinging alloys with high performance

The strength and formability trade-off is widely existed in metallic materials, more evident HCP crystal structured materials. Grain size has been recognised as a critical factor influencing nearly all aspects of properties. Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) methods were developed to produce ultra-fine grained (UFG) alloys to improve strength, ductility and corrosion resistance. However, most current SPD methods cannot produce industry-scale components and need a large investment in tool design to endure repetitive high loads.  Hence there is a key need for the exploitation of novel cost-effective SPD routes to produce bulk materials.

For powder metallurgy processing and additive manufacturing , the largest technical challenge is how to efficiently get rid of all pores and incomplete inter-particle bonding. We pioneered the design of in-situ casting to produce pore-free bulk nanostructured Mg alloy. In future, we are going to develop more disruptive processing to produce pore-free components.

To correlate microstructure with property, multi-scale microstructure evolution during processing will be deeply investigated by using novel characterisation approaches. In addition, the microstructure evolution of alloys during processing is expected to be complex and some feature size could be up to 100 microns that need to be mapped in 3D as 2D microstructure information is insufficient to understand and develop models of the fundamental mechanisms that determine the properties of the alloys.

As a light-weight high specific strength metal structural material, magnesium has attracted increasing attention in seceral industrial sectors. At the same time, magnesium has very excellent hydrogen storage and electrochemical performance, and it will play an important role as a new energy material in the future. The hydrogen storage capacity of magnesium is 7.6wt%, which is the highest among all available metal hydrogen storage materials. However, the thermodynamic and kinetic performance of magnesium is poor, and it can only release hydrogen at high temperatures above 300 ^oC with low efficiency. Therefore, developing magnesium hydrogen storage materials, reducing the hydrogen release temperature and increasing the rate of hydrogen sorption and disorbtion are the keys to reduce the cost of hydron storage and transport in future.