At an evaluation meeting held recently at CAS Institute of Metal Research (IMR) Shenyang, a panel of international experts fully confirmed the achievements scored over the past three years by a Sino-German MPI für Metallforschung Partner Group at IMR.
Dr. K. Lu, group leader, reported to the evaluation committee on the progress of research activities, team organization from 1999 to 2002 and its future plans. The primary research subjects of this group are nano-structured materials and related non-equilibrium materials such as amorphous alloys and thin films. The research also included both experimental and theoretical (computer simulation) phase transformation, properties and processing, microstructure materials. The study aims at improving the understanding of the intrinsic nano-structure-property relationship of the materials, as well as exploring new types of advanced materials with novel properties and their technological application. By means of computer simulation, researchers probed into melting mechanism of superheated crystals. The results demonstrates a strong correlation between the Lindemann criterion and the Born criterion: melting is initiated by local lattice instabilities governed by both, which is also in account with the kinetic model of homogeneous nucleation catastrophe
.R.W. Cahn commented this work by stating: "For many years there has been uncertainly about the processes that trigger melting in solids. A new simulation manages to tie several threads together" .
The evaluation partner group consists of famous scientists from China, Germany and United States. They are Prof. Herbert Gleiter from Inst. of Nanotechnology, Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany, Prof. John H. Perepezko from University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, Prof. Manfred Ruehlefrom Max-planck Institute fur Metallforschung, Germany, Prof. Shi Chang-Xu from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Prof. Ye Heng-Qiang from IMR, CAS.
