Achievement

Shape memory alloys (SMAs), another focus, have important uses for example as actuators for medical and aerospace devices. Magnetic-actuated SMA’s are potentially much more practical for a number of applications, for example where fast actuation is needed. IGERT faculty Karaman, Lagoudas, Arroyave, Zhang, Cagin, and Ross and four Trainees have been working toward such materials, with several collaborative grants supporting this work, including a new Materials World Network project this year. Among recent advances, trainee Monroe with Yegin and Karaman has successfully fabricated a porous NiCoMnSn-based SMA, with the large surface area that may be useful for the potential energy harvesting applications envisioned for this and related materials. This result (appearing in Scripta Materialia, with collaborators from NRL and Tohoku, Japan) represents an advance in techniques to fabricate these materials, and also follows modeling efforts, for example by Lagoudas and his group.