Dalong Zhang

Working closely with colleagues at Baylor's Point-of-Need Innovations (PONI) Center on scalable manufacturing of metallic materials, especially for nuclear/fusion/high-temperature applications Studying the underlying thermo-mechanical mechanisms responsible for friction-based manufacturing processes and the unique material properties thereafter

• Advanced manufacturing methods including Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE) to design Mg alloys with superior mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. • Defect characterization and deformation mechanisms in fusion energy materials.

• Characterization of radiation induced defects in FeCrAl alloys for nuclear fuel cladding application, using On-zone STEM, high resolution EDS, and atom probe tomography (APT). • Fundamental understanding on deformation mechanisms in nuclear materials.

• Investigated fundamental mechanisms for deformation twinning in HCP materials in the proper context of lattice dislocations, strain accommodation by TEM, in-situ TEM, and EBSD.

• Used in-situ TEM and High Resolution TEM to quantitatively study the deformation mechanisms of nano-pillars or thin films with various sizes and orientations fabricated by FIB from Mg/Mg alloys. • Awarded successful user proposals for three consecutive years.

• Investigated the influence of alloying elements on texture, dislocation structure, stacking faults/stacking fault energy, and deformation mechanisms in Mg alloys by TEM, in-situ TEM, EBSD, atom probe tomography (APT), and plasticity modeling.