Principal Investigator Michael J Demkowicz
Helium has low solid solubility in metals and forms voids, which degrades the mechanical properties of materials. Certain metallic nanocomposites with a large interface area to volume ratio have shown high helium solubility. There is a need to understand how helium migrates, clusters and grows into bubbles and voids at such interfaces.
Using Cu-Nb multilayers as a model system we seek to understand the atomic scale mechanisms that operate at these interfaces. Modeling the effect of local conditions like stress and temperature will allow us to build continuum models to predict the behavior of helium over longer times.