Layered Solids Group (LSG)

MAX phase group members Michael Naguib, Justin Griggs, Nina Lane, and Abe Crook ran a ceramics lab for the 2-day course on materials for emerging technologies. The course took place September 14-15, 2011.

For more information go here.

Members of the MAX phase group, the Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, and The Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University have published a new article in Advanced Materials on their high impact research in the area of Two-Dimensional Nanocrystals. The paper, entitled “Two-Dimensional Nanocrystals Produced by Exfolation of Ti₃AlC₂“, has been uploaded to the publications page here.^*

In the paper, the research team recounts their ability to transform three dimensional titanium-aluminum carbide, a typical representative of a family of layered ternary carbides called MAX phases, into a two dimensional structure with greatly different properties.

Read the full press release here.

News Items:

• Materials View
• nanowerk
• R&D Magazine
• Blog: Next Big Future
• Blog: Pointers weekly
• American Ceramic Society: Ceramic Tech Today
• Linkoping University news

Other languages:

• Nano Technology Research Association (Korean)
• Industrie & Technologies (French)
• Materials Research Centre (Russian)
• Linkoping University news (Swedish)

^*All PDF files are copyright protected. Please contact Dr. Barsoum at barsoumw at drexelDOTedu to receive a password for downloading files.

Babak Anasori’s “MAX Dragon” image is now one of the rotating images on the American Physcial Society homepage, www.aps.org!

Click the image above to be directed to the MAX Dragon page on the APS website.

Congratulations to Michael Naguib! He successfully passed his PhD Candidacy August 18, 2011.

See his abstract here.

PhD students Babak Anasori and Michael Naguib win second place for their poster entitled “Scanning Electron Microscopy of Two Dimensional Ti₃C₂ Layers” in the International Metallographic contest 2011!

Second Place

Class 4: Electron Microscopy Scanning
“Scanning Electron Microscopy of Two Dimensional Ti₃C₂ Layers”
Babak Anasori, Michael Naguib, Yuri Gogotsi, Michel Barsoum

Click the image to see Babak and Michael’s poster. (PDF file is copyright protected, send an email to request password).

For more information go here.

PhD student Babak Anasori won in two categories in the International Metallographic contest 2011! His artistic images “Cave,” which was microscopy performed on Michael Naguib’s work, and the famous “MAX Dragon” both won first place in their class. The winning images were showcased at the Microscopy & Microanalysis 2011 Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee.

Winning images are:

First Place

Class 9: Artistic Microscopy – Black and White Only
“Cave'”
Babak Anasori, Michael Naguib, Yury Gogotsi, Michel W. Barsoum

First Place

Class 11: Digital Microscopy Artistic
“MAX Dragon”
Babak Anasori, Michael W. Barsoum

For more information go here.

Babak Anasori’s “Cave,” winner of Artistic Microscopy

Babak Anasori’s “MAX Dragon,” winner of Digital Microscopy Artistic

Summer REU student Natalie Klotz won first place among all the Sensors posters in the REU poster contest Thursday, August 12!

Her poster is entitled “Property Changes of Polymer Composites Reinforced with Ti₃SiC₂.” The co-authors are PhD student Shan Chen and Dr. Chris Li, both from the Soft Matter and Hybrid Materials group, and Dr. Michel Barsoum of the MAX Phase Research Group.

Click the image to see Natalie’s poster. (PDF file is copyright protected, send an email to request password).

PhD student Nina Lane attended the International Conference on Processing and Manufacturing of Advanced Materials (THERMEC) in Québec City, Canada, August 1-5, 2011. Thanks to an International Travel Award through the Office of International Programs as well as a student travel grant through the THERMEC committee, she was able to give an invited talk entitled “Anharmonic Thermal Motion of Select MAX Phases With Pair Distribution Function Analysis Through High Temperature Neutron Diffraction.”

See abstract here.

The MAX phase group has student researchers and interns joining the group for the summer, all working on a variety of interesting projects.

Meet the MAX phase summer researchers!

Aurelija Mockute is a PhD student from Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden. She is currently working on making magnetic MAX phases through cold pressing powders and pressureless sintering.

Natalie Klotz is a Philadelphia local who is studying as a B.S. student at Brown University. During the summer she is working on a project with Dr. Michel Barsoum along with Dr. Chris Li, striving to synthesize single-layer binary carbides to reinforce polymers.

Robert Hall is a B.S. student at Drexel studying Mechanical Engineering. Over the summer he has been working on nano-indentation of muscovite and biotite, which are different grades of mica, using the nanoindenter. He is testing the mechanical properties such as the hardness and elastic modulus using various indenter tips.

Joshua Carle is a Chemical Engineering B.S. student at Drexel. He is currently working on developing novel methods for exfoliating MAX phases to make “MXenes,” single layer structures that are, well, basically “MAX” without the “A.”

Some new 2011 publications are now available on the publications page. See the latest paper by PhD student Mohamed Shamma et al. that was just published in Scripta Materialia here!