Metallurgy Matters for Creating a Sustainable World

One of the most pressing challenges and opportunities for the physical metallurgy community lies in our ability to harness the latest scientific advances to have a positive impact on the environment, economy, and society. We must learn to design, produce and implement metals and alloys in a rapid and sustainable manner. Germane to these goals is the necessity to examine the field of Physical Metallurgy for intersections between fundamental science and the sustainability of proposed technologies. The research objective of this meeting is to explore the complex relationships between processing, structure, property and performance that are needed to overcome acute barriers to discovery and implementation of sustainable metals.

Advances in physical metallurgy are needed to enable forward-looking sustainability concepts in light weighting, recycling, extreme environment, magnetic/energy and others, and technical approach for this meeting will be to focus on the fundamental scientific underpinnings (material defects, thermodynamics and kinetic interactions, microstructure) necessary to achieve these goals. Further, new discoveries in these domains are being enabled through 3D/4D high-resolution microstructure probes, emerging theories, computational models and data science-driven simulations, novel processing pathways, and the measurements and tools to provide connectivity between them. The oral and poster sessions will provide a robust venue for discussion of the fundamental science, methods and tools, and new discoveries, with the anticipated outcome of providing a vision for using physical metallurgical sciences to enable a more sustainable future. The potential impact of the meeting will be represented through the engagement of the diverse structural metals research community to harness the dialogs of the meeting toward accelerating the design and development of advanced materials.