Paper NM+TF-TuA9
Nano-Manufacturing of Materials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s NanoApplications Center

Tuesday, October 16, 2007, 4:20 pm, Room 615

The NanoApplications Center (http://nanotech.ornl.gov/) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) employs state-of-the-art facilities and multidisciplinary R&D capabilities to transition the discoveries of nanoscience to innovative technologies for energy environment, and economic competitiveness. It fosters innovation of new energy-related nanotechnologies and helps transform industry by enabling the responsible development of processes for mass production and application of nano-scale materials, structures, devices, and systems that provide unprecedented energy, cost, and productivity benefits. Capabilities within the NanoApplications Center include 1) materials processing and fabrication, 2) characterization, and 3) responsible nanomanufacturing, and 4) rapid prototyping for development and deployment. This paper describes example nano-manufacturing projects for materials processing and real-time measurements for process control. These include investigation of infrared-based processing for high temperature processing of metals to enhance metallurgical and mechanical properties by controlling grain size and development of coating processes that infuse alloys several hundred nanometers deep into the surface of a metal to create enhanced durability. To better enable nanomanufacturing, researchers at ORNL have developed and applied novel real-time characterization techniques to process monitoring and control. A commercial differential mobility analyzer is being used to sample and characterize nanoparticles in real time.