Network Theory Meets Materials Science

Time: Wednesday, December 8, 2021 - 2:30pm - 3:30pm
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: Chris Wolverton, Northwestern University
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Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Seminar Series

Seminars are held weekly on Wednesday at 2:30 PM. Please contact Diana Qiu, Amir Pahlavan, or Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio with speaker suggestions.

December 8, 2021

Chris Wolverton
Northwestern University

"Network Theory Meets Materials Science"

Abstract: One of the holy grails of materials science, unlocking structure-property relationships, has largely been pursued via bottom-up investigations of how the arrangement of atoms and interatomic bonding in a material determine its macroscopic behavior. Here we consider a complementary approach, a top-down study of the organizational structure of networks of materials, based on the interaction between materials themselves. We first unravel the complete "phase stability network of all inorganic materials" as a densely-connected complex network of 21,000 thermodynamically stable compounds (nodes) interlinked by 41 million tie-lines (edges) defining their two-phase equilibria, as computed by high-throughput density functional theory. Using machine learning of the connectivity of nodes in this phase stability network, we predict the likelihood that novel predicted materials will be amenable to successful experimental synthesis.

Bio: Christopher Wolverton is the Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. Before joining the faculty, he worked at the Research and Innovation Center at Ford Motor Company, where he was group leader for the Hydrogen Storage and Nanoscale Modeling Group. He received his BS degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin, his PhD degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and performed postdoctoral work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His research interests include computational studies of a variety of energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials via first-principles atomistic calculations, high-throughput and machine learning tools to accelerate materials discovery, and "multiscale" methodologies for linking atomistic and microstructural scales. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Society for Metals and is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. He has published more than 400 papers, with ~35,000 citations, and an h-index of 94.