SEMINAR – Advanced Manufacturing of Multifunctional Ceramic Materials

Abstract:

Ceramic materials with unique properties such as chemical stability, oxidation and corrosion resistance, have been used widely in extreme environment applications, such as hypersonic vehicles, turbine engines, power plants, nuclear reactors, etc. One of my recently funded Army Research Office (ARO) projects is to study the effect of processing condition (e.g., 1000oC-2000oC) of SiC ceramic material on its microstructure, chemical composition, and electrical/dielectric properties (e.g., DC/AC conductivity, bandgap, permittivity, and loss tangent). One of the unique features of the ceramic material is that at elevated pyrolysis temperature, it starts amorphous at macro-scale but the structure slowly crystalizes heterogeneously at nano-scale, consisting of a crystalized ceramic phase and a free-carbon phase. Both phases undergo several evolutional structural changes — multiple chemical bonds form up at elevated pyrolysis temperatures. When used in power electronics applications, it has the capability to withstand much stronger electrical shock and higher application temperature than a traditional semiconductor material. When doped with other elements (e.g., N, Al, B) or reinforced with other filler (e.g., CNT, ZrB2), the material’s electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties can be further manipulated. Knowledge learned will provide a fundamental guideline in modifying a material’s electrical properties for applications such as wireless temperature and pressure measurement, electromagnetic (EM) absorption material, radiofrequency (RF) transparent metamaterial radome/antenna design, which are of great importance to the electronics and defense industries.

Biography:

Dr. Cheryl Xu is an Associate Professor at the Florida State University. She received her Ph.D. degree in 2006 from Purdue University, and her M.S. degree in 2001 from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Her research interests include advanced manufacturing of ceramic materials, high temperature sensor design and manufacturing, process optimization and control through artificial intelligence. Dr. Xu has co-authored a textbook (Intelligent Systems: Modeling, Optimization and Control) and four book chapters. She has published about 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 30 refereed conference proceedings. She has eight US patent applications.
She received a Faculty Research Excellence Award from FSU College of Engineering in 2017. She had won twice the FSU GAP competition award in 2016 and 2017, funded by the FSU Office of Research to commercialize research results. She is the only recipient of the IEEE Education Society Teaching Award in 2015; won the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award and the Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME) Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award in 2011.
She has served on Society Committee in IEEE Education Society since 2014, chaired NSF National Wireless Research Collaboration Workshop in 2015. She served as an Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Micro- and Nano- Manufacturing from 2015, an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Nanomanufacturing from 2008 to 2010. She is active in conducting research in manufacturing field and has attracted a high level of research funding ($5.4M). She has graduated five Ph.D. and four M.S. students. Her graduated students work in major manufacturing companies, such as GE, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz.