Grain boundary segregation engineering is a resource efficient and recycling friendly material design approach, as it aims to only modify the interface structure of a material in a structural or chemical manner. This is in strong contrast to conventional alloy development processes, where the whole bulk is chemically altered, rendering the resultant material more resource intensive, expensive, and also more challenging to recycle. In previous works, grain boundary engineering has been successfully applied to improve the room temperature properties of tungsten, a commonly brittle material to be used in extreme environments such as fusion reactors. In an international cooperation with Dr. N. Peters from the Forschungszentrum Jülich and Dr. T. Frolov from the Livermore National Laboratory, Univ.-Prof. Daniel Kiener from our department aims to detail the fundamental mechanisms governing these attractive properties, as well as the influence of elevated temperatures and on the respective deformation and failure processes. This combination of in situ nanomechanics, high resolution electron microscopy and atomistic modeling will enable novel design strategies for advanced materials targeting extreme temperature and radiation environments.
