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6 A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9 LASER AIMS AT MATERIALS SCIENCE RESEARCH A new three-petawatt laser named Zeus will soon be built at the Universi- ty of Michigan (U-M), Ann Arbor. Fund- ed with $16 million from the Nation- al Science Foundation, the facility will enable basic and applied research, and will test a leading theory on how the universe operates at a subatomic level. The results could lead to advancements in materials science, medicine, and na- tional security. “This laser will have the highest peak power in the United States and will be among the world’s most power- ful laser systems for the next decade,” says Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Op- tical Science at U-M, where the laser will be built. The U.S. built the world’s first pet- awatt laser in 1996, but has not kept pace with more ambitious systems un- der construction elsewhere. This in- cludes two 10-petawatt systems in Europe and a 5.3-petawatt laser in China, which also has plans to build a 100-petawatt laser. Zeus will be an up- grade of an existing 0.5-petawatt laser known as Hercules. The new laser will be a user facility, providing access to extreme laser inten- sities to scientists and engineers across the country. One of the planned exper- iments will shoot the laser at a high- energy electron beam going the oppo- site way in order to mimic a much more powerful zettawatt laser. With this ca- pability, the U-M team is most excited about the possibility of probing quan- tum electrodynamics, the reigning the- ory of how the universe operates at the subatomic level. Regarding materials science activities, Zeus could help de- velop methods such as improving de- tection of nuclear weapons materials in shipping containers and exploring howmaterials change on very fast time- scales. umich.edu . PARTNERSHIP EXPLORES ADHESIVES FOR LIGHT- WEIGHT VEHICLES A new DOE partnership with PPG, Pittsburgh, will use supercomputing From left, scientists Anatoly Maksimchuk and John Nees demonstrate use of the Hercules laser. Courtesy of Joseph Xu. RESEARCH TRACKS resources to accelerate development and testing of structural adhesives for vehicles made of lightweight materials. PPG will collaborate with DOE’s Law- rence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop comput- er-based models of the aging charac- teristics of a variety of next-generation adhesives designed to join lightweight materials. Vehicle manufacturers are exploring the use of high-strength steel, aluminum, magnesium, carbon-fiber composites, and other lightweight ma- terials to reduce vehicle mass and im- prove fuel economy. This approach re- quires new adhesive chemistries that will mitigate corrosion and thermal ex- pansion issues associated with joining dissimilar materials. “It is critical to understand how adhesive bonds evolve over the life of a vehicle,” says Peter Votruba-Drzal, PPG global technical director, automotive OEM coatings. “This knowledge has tra- ditionally come through iterative for- mulation and testing, including lengthy exposure tests. This project will enable us to reduce adhesives testing time by up to 75%, which in turn will help man- ufacturers accelerate development of increasingly energy-efficient vehicles.” The project will use supercomput- ing to achieve a fundamental under- standing of the influence of water on the chemistry and adhesion properties of adhesives joined to lightweight sub- strates. Supercomputing resources are necessary due to the extremely large data sets involved in each simulation. PPG will provide $60,000 for the project in the form of technical activities at the company’s Global Coatings Innovation Center in Allison Park, Pa. The DOE will provide $300,000 to LLNL and PNNL for modeling expertise and use of their su- percomputing resources. ppg.com.