Dr. Stoichko Antonov from Structural Materials Team at National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will give a seminar titled "Designing Next-Generation Structural Materials: From Concept to Scale-Up" to the interested faculty and students at Discovery Park.

Abstract

Increasingly demanding operating conditions associated with highly efficient energy systems, especially those fueled by hydrogen, require enhanced creep capability, fatigue resistance (especially against damage from increased cycling), and corrosion/oxidation from the environment. Consequently, innovative approaches are needed to design alloys, relying on a critical combination of chemistry and a microstructural blueprint of features for stability and strength. This talk will focus on the team’s efforts to improve existing commercial and NETL developed alloys as well as to develop affordable, durable, cost-effective high-performance materials (HPMs) necessary for safe and reliable generation of power from hydrogen and enabling a bridge to net-zero carbon economy. Specifically work on the NETL 725 variants, which contain γ′/γ″ compact precipitates; the NETL 740H casting process to produce a 740H castings with creep lives similar to the wrought product; as well as NETL’s advanced Fe-9% Cr martensitic-ferritic steel (CPJ7). Our team has demonstrated scale-up a variety of experimental alloys from ~6.8 kg to ~68 kg by VIM and ESR. These High-quality industrial-scale ingots are often made by ESR, including mission critical heat-resistant alloys for advanced energy systems. In addition, a brief summary of NETL’s new programs on designing alloys for hydrogen service will be presented.

Biography

Dr. Stoichko Antonov received his Ph.D. the from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2017, working on alloy design and development of Ni-based superalloys. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a research assistant professor at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing. His research is mainly focused on solving energy sustainability and manufacturing challenges in the air transportation industry by leveraging knowledge on the physical metallurgy of aerospace materials (superalloys, steels and titanium alloys). He is the recipient an 2020/2021 Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and was hosted by the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung in Germany where he held the deputy group leader positions of the Atom Probe Tomography and High-Performance Materials for Extreme Environments groups. His research efforts were aimed at utilizing advanced multi-scale characterization methods, such as atom probe tomography (APT) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) correlatively, to link the near-atomic scale (phase transformations) processes to the macro-scale (deformation mechanisms) behavior of different advanced Ni-, Ti-, and Fe- alloys, especially in the presence of defects and atomic hydrogen. Along this path he has also worked on developing experimental workflows that enable characterization of environmentally sensitive materials, e.g. hydrogenated Ti and battery anodes, via cryogenic sample preparation. He has authored and co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.