Abstract: The growing global energy demand and concerns over energy security have underscored the need to enhance nuclear energy efficiency. Achieving this requires nuclear materials capable of withstanding increasingly extreme environments. For example, the advances in nuclear reactors create exceptionally harsh working conditions for materials operating at higher temperatures, and more intensive radiation doses, while maintaining integrity in the presence of chemically aggressive environments. In some cases, the effects of these environments can even couple with each other. Those extreme environments can degrade material’s performance, thus requiring fundamental improvement in materials. However, the improvement of materials for nuclear applications is a daunting challenge, especially in the absence of a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of materials in complex and highly coupled extreme environments. Using examples from our group’s research, we present strategies to overcome these challenges. Specifically, we employed computational techniques to understand the relationship between microstructure/microchemistry, corrosion, and radiation responses in nuclear materials. These techniques help us to understand the degradation phenomena from a top-down perspective and provide insights in design of nuclear materials with enhanced properties. These examples highlight the great potential of modeling into understanding and improvement of materials behavior in nuclear applications.

Bio:  Dr. Jianqi Xi is an assistant professor in NPRE and the director of the MNM group at UIUC. Before moving to UIUC, Dr. Xi was a scientist of Digital FIB group in Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Dr. Xi earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 2017, advised by Prof. William J. Weber on the modification of functionality in nuclear materials. Then, he moved to Izabela Szlufarska’s group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as staff scientist to study the coupling effects of radiation and corrosion on the stability of nuclear materials. Dr. Xi is especially interested in applying multiscale models and machine learning techniques to the study of radiation & corrosion degradation of nuclear materials, as well as in employing digital twin approaches to predict surface topography under ion beam irradiation. 

NPRE 199 Undergraduate Seminar is a series of lectures and discussions on current research and developments in the NPRE discipline areas.  Presentations are led by visiting scientists and engineers from industry and research facilities as well as faculty and advanced students.  Seminars are open to the Illinois community, space allowing.  Undergraduate students wishing course credit for attending should register in NPRE 199.