Pengyuan Xiu, a fifth-year graduate student in the U-M Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (NERS), was given an Honorable Mention award for his talk at the Advanced Graduate Research Symposium at the 2021 Engineering Research Symposium (ERS).
Pengyuan’s talk demonstrates the use of the recently developed on-zone scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) technique for effectively and efficiently imaging and analyzing dislocation loop formation under irradiation. The methodology developed significantly enhances the imaging quality, improves the accuracy of determining dislocation loop-type, and simplifies the experimental setup associated.
“We look forward to the adoption of this simple and robust imaging technique in the community, to accelerate the assessment of radiation response of FCC-based materials for advanced nuclear reactor applications,” Pengyuan said. His work was recently published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials.
“I saw some of Pengyuan’s early images using this technique during my interview before joining NERS,” said Prof. Kevin Field. “I was so impressed and now proud to have helped finalize the concept and see Pengyuan get recognition for the ingenuity and hard work.”
”It was a great experience to share my research with an audience that has a broad engineering background in ERS,” said Pengyuan. “I was also glad to see people’s great interest in the future of nuclear energy.”
Pengyuan was born in Beijing, China. At NERS, he works in the Nuclear Oriented Materials & Examination (NOME) Laboratory with Field. He was a Graduate Student Assistant for several NERS materials courses and is a member of our American Nuclear Society Student Chapter. When he’s not working, he enjoys playing and watching chess and soccer. Pengyuan is looking for positions in academia in the universities or national laboratories.
“I appreciate all my co-authors—Kevin Field, Lumin Wang, Yanwen Zhang, and Hongbin Bei—for their invaluable input into this work,” Pengyuan said. “I also want to thank all the administrative support from NERS and technical support from Michigan Center for Materials Characterization (MC2).”
