Golden Kumar
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Materials Science
Metal nanostructures, which are features thousands of times thinner than a hair, are useful for catalysis, batteries and energy storage, sensors, filters, and drug delivery. Today, however, they are usually made with expensive lithography and thin-film deposition.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
nanomanufacturing
nanomolding
thermomechanical molding
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Decouple the creep mechanisms that govern thermomechanical nanomolding of crystalline metals, including dislocation plasticity, Nabarro-Herring creep, and Coble creep, by systematically varying processing conditions and feedstock.
- Determine how mold size, processing time, and atmosphere control how metal flows to fill nanoscale templates.
- Apply creep-based molding to multi-phase and porous alloys, including high-entropy and eutectic alloys, to make high aspect-ratio and porous metal nanostructures and quantify atomic diffusion in them.
More about the research
Molding, which presses material into a patterned template, is a fast and scalable alternative. It already works well for soft polymers and glassy materials. Crystalline metals are harder to mold. Their liquid state is highly reactive, and their solid state is built from rigid crystal grains that resist flowing into tiny spaces. This project asks whether creep can solve the problem. Creep is the slow, permanent deformation of a solid under heat and stress. Engineers usually see it as a weakness in structures, but recent studies suggest it could make controlled nanoscale shaping possible.
Why it matters
Cheaper, scalable ways to make metal nanostructures could lower costs for technologies that rely on them. These include catalysts, batteries and other energy storage, sensors, filters, and drug-delivery devices. Porous metal nanostructures with large surface areas are especially wanted for energy conversion and biomedical uses. The work could therefore benefit manufacturers in energy, healthcare, and other industries.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jaime Marian
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Materials Science
Determine how 'necklace' microstructures nucleate at grain boundaries during dynamic recrystallization in body-centered-cubic refractory multi-principal element alloys, using mesoscale modeling.
William Musinski
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI·Materials Science·Early-career
Measure strains inside grains, dislocation substructures and grain boundary interactions before and during fatigue cracking, using synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction, which sees inside metals as they deform, together with high-resolution microscopy.
Susanta Ghosh
Michigan Technological University, MI·Engineering·Early-career
Develop a Bayesian convolutional neural network that predicts electron density, the map of where electrons reside in a material, while reporting its own uncertainty.
The school
University of Texas at Dallas: 16 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 239 research doctorates a year.
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