Yildiz students take gold and silver at Materials Research Society conference
Qiyang Lu and Lixin Sun won Graduate Student Awards at the 2017 Spring Materials Research Society conference.
Qiyang Lu a 5th-year PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering won a Gold Award for his presentation entitled “Controlling the Properties of Perovskites Oxides by Tuning the Oxygen Defect Chemistry . His research is focuses on understanding the physical mechanisms in controlling the point defect concentration in functional oxides. Oxides are essential building blocks for a variety of functionalities, enabling applications ranging from electronic devices to clean energy technologies. Lu developed a chemical treatment that can change and tune the surface point defect concentration of oxides that are important cathode materials for solid oxide fuel cells. The treatment produce 30 times the chemical and performance stability of the oxides which effectively improves the energy efficiency of solid oxide fuel cells. This approach also allows tuning the point defect concentration which can enable new types of oxide electronic devices.
Lixin Sun a 5th-year PhD student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering won the Silver Award for her presentation entitled “How does a mechanical defect impact electrochemical properties in oxides?". Sun employs computational simulation methods to understand the impact of dislocations on electro-chemical properties in ceramic oxides. She demonstrated that multiple mechanisms contribute to the fundamental understanding of material behavior in harsh environments such as high temperature or oxidizing/reducing atmosphere and therefore assist the material design for several sustainable energy techniques, including solid oxide fuel cells, electrolyzers for water splitting, oxygen separation membranes in reactors for oxygen-combustion, and redox-based resistive memories. The computational frameworks developed in this work are also broadly applicable to other microstructures and other materials.
Both Lu and Sun work with NSE’s professor Bilge Yldiz and are a part of the Laborotory for Electrochemical Interfaces at MIT
The 2017 MRS Conference was held in Pheonix, Arizona in April.
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