Seminar on Thursday Mar. 3, 3:30-4:30 pm, EG4211

Model and Modeling of Nanostructures

 

Hanchen Huang

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

(http://www.rpi.edu/~huangh)

 

Nanostructures are the core of emerging nanotechnology, and also the constituents of composite materials for conventional technologies. In order to design and analyze the nanostructures, both model development and modeling are pivotally important. This presentation covers such two elements: model development and modeling of nanostructures. The first part of this presentation introduces the atomistic simulator ADEPT for polycrystalline thin film deposition, with emphasis on the memory efficient algorithm of polycrystals representation. This part ends with several sets of simulation results to demonstrate unique features of this atomistic simulator, including three dimensions, atomic level, realistic deposition rates, and polycrystalline thin film.

The second part of this presentation turns to the application of the atomistic simulator, together with other modeling approaches (ab initio and classical molecular mechanics) and experiments, in the design and mechanics of nanostructures. The design is primarily through the control of interface kinetics and intrinsic stress conditions. The nanostructures include nanograins, nanorods, nanowires, and nanoplates.

 

Hanchen Huang is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He serves on the editorial board of Computer Modeling in Engineering and Science and that of Advances in Applied Plasma Sciences, and as guest editor of special issues in Philosophical Magazine, Computational Materials Science, and Journal of Computer Aided Materials Design. He co-chairs the Nanotechnology Committee of US Association for Computational Mechanics, and is a senior member of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society. Having earned BS and MS degrees of theoretical physics in China and PhD degree in nuclear engineering at UCLA, Hanchen now focuses his research on the design and mechanics of nanostructures. Four PhD students have graduated and 15 researchers (post-docs etc.) have conducted researches under his supervision/sponsorship. He has published 70 papers in peer reviewed journals, spanning the fields of multiscale modeling, surface/interface nanostructures, nano/micro mechanics, particle-solid interactions, positron annihilation characterization, and nuclear fission.