Luijten: Advanced Materials Center for Excellence: Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (ChiMaD)

The current industrial materials development paradigm rests on a make-and-test strategy that results in an unacceptably long time and cost to insert new materials into applications. Over the past quarter century, Northwestern and its spinoff company QuesTek have pioneered and commercialized a radically disruptive alternative through a systems approach to fully computational design and accelerated qualification of high performance materials, already demonstrating the cycle compression goals of the national Materials Genome Initiative. Building upon our recent experience in the DARPA-Accelerated Insertion of Materials (AIM) and Digital 3D Structures programs, we will bring together a next generation of state-of-the-art computational methods, curated materials databases, and novel integrated experimental methods, creating the NIST-sponsored Center for Hierarchal Materials Design. Centered on a regional collaboration of Northwestern University, Argonne National Lab, University of Chicago and QuesTek, it will serve together with NIST as a national resource for the verified codes and curated databases that enable proliferation of a materials-by-design strategy through US industry partners. Numerous materials “use cases” of industrial relevance will drive purposeful method and tool development, while aiding transfer to industry of both the new principles of computational materials design and the AIM methodology of accelerated materials qualification. Demonstrating a broad methodology for multicomponent, multiphase materials spanning metals and polymers for structural and multifunctional applications, the metals use cases will include both Co-based alloys and fatigue-resistant Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) exploiting coherent nanodispersion-strengthening, and novel eutectic-toughened intermetallic composites. The polymer testbeds will include nanodispersion-enhanced multifunctional systems combining mechanical and conductive properties for advanced polymer-matrix composite (PMC) matrix applications, as well as novel polymeric systems for flexible electronics and nanopatterning. Dissemination and outreach will be facilitated by a unique ICME MS program at Northwestern, as well as collaboration with ASM on software and databases dissemination to materials undergraduate programs as well as a 3D microstructure archival website.