Materialism Podcast

Glass materials continue to fascinate me. My last visit to @LTalirz at @SCHOTT_AG was genuinely eye-opening—learned so much about what’s possible with glass design. Highly recommend checking out the @MaterialismPod episode with Schott on this topic. materialismpodcast.com/episodes.html

✨ People have asked for a titanium @MaterialismPod episode for ages! Well, it's finally here. I have to admit... I did not realize how complex and complicated Titanium was from a materials science perspective! 🧪🤯

🔷🔶 Two phases with very different properties
🛠️🧬 A gazillion ways to alloy the metal and modify which phase dominates
🧺⚪ Two different microstructures (basketweave and equiaxed)
🚀🛞 Tons of processing routes to make these fine, coarse, or mixed...

Its specific strength is bonkers and boasts some pretty terrific corrosion resistance. No wonder it's been a game-changer in fields ranging from aerospace to medical implants—and yes, the latest iPhones! 📱

Some additional tidbits you'll learn about:
- how engineers used to blow things up on football fields to test it? Yes, really. 🏈💥
- markers that almost ruined titanium aerospace parts
- how city water was sabotaging titanium welds
- you find titanium in Oreo frosting!? 🍪

🔗 links below
#MaterialScience #Engineering #Innovation #Podcast #Titanium

We decided to record an episode on quantum materials 3 years ago but it felt so daunting that we never finished it and we ultimately had to call in a ringer, @JasonKhoury1 of @ASU to help break it down and we're releasing the episode on his birthday 🎉 🎂!!

This episode is an intro to quantum materials where we describe quantum behaviors, interactions of charge, orbitals, lattice, and spin, and why materials science is a good discipline to study this field. We'll have a series quantum materials episodes to follow, but we felt we needed to describe some fundamentals first.

Give it a listen and let me know in the comments which quantum material topics we should cover in this series!

#podcast #materials #quantum

You remember that scene in #Oppenheimer with the giant glass jars slowly filling with marbles to represent the uranium and plutonium needed for the Manhattan project?

The project was saved by the Met Lab and Oak Ridge who provided the materials... Or was it???

A new class of materials doesn't show up very often but two decades ago researchers at Oxford and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan independently discovered alloys that break all the rules for solubility and phases. Listeners have requested an episode on High Entropy Alloys for years! The time has finally come! We talk about the supposed four core effects... Are these real or not?

I moved to Boston in 2009 for grad school. I remember the convenient tunnel that connects Cambridge to the airport by going *underneath* downtown Boston.
What I didn't know was what went into the Big Dig project that was finished in 2007. The project took 16 years and grew in projected costs from $2.7B to nearly $15B! Most tragic of all, the engineering was so flawed that a fatal ceiling collapse occurred a year before the project was completed.
So what went wrong? Design, decision-making, inspection, and .... materials failure as well!

We return to our Materials Failure miniseries of @MaterialismPod to cover the materials failure and engineering decisions that led to this disaster.

The discovery of new materials is an immense challenge, with a vast design space and numerous success criteria. @Microsoft has recently demonstrated an advanced approach to machine learning-assisted material discovery, particularly in the realm of lithium-ion battery electrolytes.

They began by exploring all possible structure types, decorating these structures with various atoms, leading to a pool of millions of candidate materials. The screening process went beyond simple stability checks to encompass a broad range of criteria, including predicted properties, electrode stability, and cost. This was achieved through various layers of filtering, leveraging data from diverse calculations, ranging from costly DFT and MD simulations to lower-fidelity calculations.

@Azure wisely positioned the expensive calculations towards the end of the pipeline, focusing resources only on the most promising candidates. Furthermore, they partnered with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory @PNNLab to synthesize the compounds identified.

In our podcast, we'll delve into this process, the challenges faced, and the future opportunities in this field, in conversation with @chc273 and @nathanabaker

I am a *huge* advocate of teaching strong communication skills to our engineering students. All jobs require engineers to get ideas across clearly and persuasively. Perhaps none more than the materials salesman. Dan Wilson of SINTX is as good as they come!

In academia, unicorns do exist: a paper getting accepted without revisions or stumbling on a discovery by sheer luck. But what if you were invited to work on a PhD project that not only turned into a thriving startup but also defined your career for the next three decades? Check out today's @MaterialismPod episode featuring Stuart Wright and @mmnowell explain the world of electron backscatter diffraction at @EDAX_LLC and @GatanMicroscopy

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ele…

Thanks to show sponsors @AmericanElement and @ElsevierMS

When I told people I was headed to @LivUni for sabbatical, everyone said I had to chat w @aicooper. I'm glad I did! We sat down and recorded a @MaterialismPod episode on automating materials discovery. Give it a listen! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aut…

20 years ago, I transferred as an undergraduate to the @UUtah, where I discovered a lifelong passion for #MaterialsScience. The education, skills, and mentoring I received there prepared me for success in graduate school and research at @UCSBengineering , @Harvard, @Tsinghua_Uni, SICCAS, Ceramatec, Inc. and beyond.

This month I celebrate ten years at my #DreamJob teaching and leading a vibrant research group at my alma mater as a professor @utahmse. 1️⃣0️⃣🥳 I've had the privilege of teaching and advising some brilliant students along the way!

Thank you @UtahCoE for providing me with the platform to grow both as a student and as a professor. It is an honor to be part of this vibrant academic community that fosters innovation and excellence. And we're just getting started with global impact through the @MaterialismPod and my YouTube channel (youtube.com/taylorsparks). Here's to 10 years of growth, learning, and making a difference! 🙌🌟 #10YearsAtUofU #Grateful #TeachingJourney #MaterialsScience

This podcast @MaterialismPod is so awesome!! Yesterday I started listening to these while comming to the lab, and the info, the tone, and the vibe, everything is pleasing.
Highly recommended, and can't wait to hear more!

I literally cannot recommend this enough, @MaterialismPod is amazing! Really REALLY technical discussions about materials science, and even though it’s not dumbed down it’s still interesting as someone not in a STEM field. Just smart people talking about cool stuff!