MULTISCALE PHENOMENA IN MATERIALS

This project developed and supported a technology base in nonequilibrium phenomena underpinning fundamental issues in condensed matter and materials science, and applied this technology to selected problems. In this way the increasingly sophisticated synthesis and characterization available for classes of complex electronic and structural materials provided a testbed for nonlinear science, while nonlinear and nonequilibrium techniques helped advance our understanding of the scientific principles underlying the control of material microstructure, their evolution, fundamental to macroscopic functionalities. The project focused on overlapping areas of emerging thrusts and programs in the Los Alamos materials community for which nonlinear and nonequilibrium approaches will have decisive roles and where productive teamwork among elements of modeling, simulations, synthesis, characterization and applications could be anticipated–particularly multiscale and nonequilibrium phenomena, and complex matter in and between fields of soft, hard and biomimetic materials. Principal topics were: (i) Complex organic and inorganic electronic materials, including hard, soft and biomimetic materials, self-assembly processes and photophysics; (ii) Microstructure and evolution in multiscale and hierarchical materials, including dynamic fracture and friction, dislocation and large-scale deformation, metastability, and inhomogeneity; and (iii) Equilibrium and nonequilibrium phases and phase transformations, emphasizing competing interactions, frustration, landscapes, glassy and stochastic dynamics, and energy focusing.