Materials Science & Engineering

Department overview

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering offers a program with strong collaborative links to other academic and industrial entities in a region strong in applied research in materials science and engineering.

The department has 11 tenured/tenure-track faculty members, more than 40 graduate students, and well-equipped laboratories with outstanding technical support. The department is part of the College of Engineering, which is located in UNT's Discovery Research Park with abundant space for teaching and research laboratories.

The department houses a state-of-the-art analytical high-resolution transmission electron microscope and a dual-beam scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam instrument in addition to $3 million in other state-of-the-art instrumentation. Several post-doctoral researchers contribute to the department as well as a group of excellent co-investigators from other departments of the College of Engineering and the physics, chemistry and biological sciences departments.

Opportunities for graduate studies

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering addresses the educational and technological challenges of creating, applying and characterizing new materials for manufacturing products in the 21st century. The department is committed to training you in all aspects of modern materials and their characterization including metals, ceramics, polymers, and electronic and optical materials.

You will conduct research using state-of–the-art equipment and facilities. The department has strong collaborative programs with other universities and industries in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and research organizations throughout the world. You will have many opportunities to develop highly marketable skills in automotive, aviation, biomedical, chemical, electric power, electronics and environmental industries as well as in academia.

The department offers master's and doctoral degrees. Work for the master's thesis consists of independent and original studies, which may be experimental, computational or a combination of the two. The doctoral degree represents the attainment of a high level of scholarship and achievement in independent research and culminates in the completion of an original dissertation.

Admission requirements

For admission into the master's and doctoral programs in materials science and engineering, you must meet the requirements of UNT's Toulouse School of Graduate Studies plus a set of specific program requirements. A list of these requirements and possible exemptions can be found in the graduate catalog at www.unt.edu/catalog.

Admission to the department is based on a holistic review outlined on the department web site www.mtsc.unt.edu. From the prospective students menu listing, click on the graduate link. Additional information is available from the graduate coordinator.

Degree requirements

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering offers graduate programs leading to a master of science and a doctor of philosophy in materials science and engineering. A minor in materials science and engineering is also available if you are working toward a degree in another program. You should contact the graduate coordinator for registration information if you wish to take less than 12 credit hours of materials science and engineering courses.

Two options for a master's degree are offered. The thesis option requires 32 credit hours, and a problems-in-lieu of thesis route requires 35 credit hours.

The doctor of philosophy degree consists of 90 credit hours beyond the bachelor's degree or 60 credit hours beyond the master's degree, with 12 credit hours allocated for a dissertation. As a doctoral candidate, you are expected to publish at least two original research articles in a referred journal before graduation. You must also present the results of your research at a departmental seminar.

Financial assistance

Teaching assistantships funded by the department and research assistantships funded by individual faculty research grants support the majority of students. Out-of-state and international students who are funded at least half time are eligible for in-state tuition rates. Only doctoral students and master's students who select the thesis option are eligible for teaching or research assistantships. A significant number of in-state tuition scholarships are available.

Materials science and engineering research laboratories

Advanced Metallics Laboratory

The work in this laboratory focuses on the processing and characterization of metals, alloys, intermetallics and composites. Facilities include non-consumable arc melting, rapid solidification (melt spinning), and controlled atmosphere furnaces, a new laser engineered net shaping (LENS) unit and a thin-film sputter deposition unit for producing nanostructured thin films and multilayers.

Projects involve production and characterization of bulk metallic glasses and nanocrystalline materials, higher temperature shape memory alloys, metallic biomaterials for bioimplants, and production and characterization of automotive aluminum castings and thin film multilayers with metastable structures. Emphasis is on understanding microstructure (nanostructure)-property-processing relationships in these classes of materials.

Computational Materials Laboratory

State-of-the-art multiscale material simulation methods are applied to study the atomic and microstructure and to structure-property relationship of a wide range of materials. Simulation packages used include electronic structure calculations, classical and ab initio molecular dynamics, Metropolis and kinetic Monte Carlo, and finite element analysis.

Electron Microscopy Laboratory

This newly formed, department-wide laboratory houses the new FEI TF20ST analytical high-resolution transmission electron microscope and the FEI Nova 200 Nanolab dual-beam scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam instrument. Other analytical characterization equipment, such as the recently acquired environmental scanning electron microscope, high resolution X-ray diffraction system and the 3-D atom probe tomography system, will also be housed here. Full optical microscopy, sample preparation and electron microscopy computer simulation facilities are also available. The multidisciplinary, multiuser laboratory emphasizes the production and characterization of nanoscale materials and devices and the transfer of technology to industry.

Energy Materials Laboratory

Research in this laboratory addresses the processing, characterization and overall device development for energy conversion technologies. Low-temperature processing of ceramic thin films is achieved through the development of oxide polymeric precursors and colloidal suspensions. Deposition techniques, such as laser assisted maskless aerosol deposition and spin coating, are also studied.

Applications of these materials processing techniques include electrodes and contacts for flexible photovoltaics, displays and solid state lighting, as well as low temperature solid oxide fuel cells and direct conversion of biofuels.

Extensive overlap exists between the Energy Materials Laboratory and the Laboratory for Atomic Scale Characterization including transmission electron microscope (TEM) and local electrode atom probe (LEAP) atomic scale characterization of photovoltaics and semiconductor junctions. Additional characterization and processing is available in this laboratory through electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, high temperature furnaces and optical spectroscopy.

Laboratory for Atomic Scale Characterization

This newly formed, department-wide laboratory houses state-of-the-art instrumentation for atomic scale characterization, including an Imago Scientific Instruments Local Electrode Atom Probe 3000x, an FEI TF20ST analytical high resolution transmission electron microscope and an FEI Nova 200 Nanolab dual-beam scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam instrument.

Other analytical characterization equipment such as an environmental scanning electron microscope, high resolution scanning XPS and Auger systems, and a high-resolution X-ray diffraction system are also housed within the laboratory. Full optical microscopy, sample preparation, and computer simulation and data reconstruction facilities are also available. The multidisciplinary, multiuser laboratory emphasizes the production and characterization of nanoscale materials and devices and the transfer of technology to industry.

Laboratory of Advanced Polymers and Optimized Materials (LAPOM)

LAPOM is dedicated to the development of materials with improved mechanical, tribological and thermophysical properties, including thermoplastics, thermosets, composites, nanohybrids and coatings. The lab focuses on high strength, wide service temperature range, low thermal expansivity, low static and dynamic surface friction, high adhesion of coatings to ceramic and metal substrates, and high scratch, wear and mar resistance.

Laboratory of Electronic Materials and Devices

This laboratory has comprehensive electronic materials synthesis and characterization capabilities. An extensive ultrahigh vacuum research cluster tool permits a combination of molecular beam epitaxy and physical vapor deposition techniques. A comprehensive surface analysis system provides X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, auger electron spectroscopy and Ar ion depth profiling capabilities. A dedicated surface science system has been developed that includes an Omicron variable temperature scanning tunneling microscope and an Omicron atomic force/scanning tunneling microscope.

The accelerator is designed to perform a wide range of materials irradiation, modification and characterization studies with a large primary ion energy range from 50 keV to 3 Mev. This permits advanced ion beam surface/ultrathin film and conventional thin film studies such as medium energy ion scattering, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, nuclear reaction analysis, particle induced X-ray emission, and forward recoil spectrometry for hydrogen analysis.

Materials Synthesis and Processing Laboratory

Research interests in this laboratory focus on the development of novel materials and processing methods for semiconductor, biomedical and defense applications. Low-k films, silica aerogels and other novel ceramics are synthesized and characterized. Supercritical methods of synthesis and processing have been developed to control material chemistry and structure.

A complete synthesis laboratory is available with several spin coaters for thin film development and a gas adsorption surface-area/pore-size analyzer for structural characterization; an infrared spectroscopy suite that includes grazing angle, attenuated total reflectance (ATR), grazing angle attenuated total reflectance (GATR), in-situ supercritical transmission cell and variable temperature capabilities; and an infrared ellipsometer that provides chemical analysis, as well as high-temperature furnaces and several supercritical reactors.

Polymer Mechanical and Rheology Laboratory

This laboratory studies polymers, hydrogels, food packaging, ceramic corrosion coatings, elastomers, blends, nanocomposites, macro-composites, nanotube filled adhesives and polymer-modified concrete. A servo-hydraulic mechanical testing machine, coupled to a 20-kilopound load cell and forward-looking-infrared (FLIR) thermal wave imaging system, is available for tensile, lap shear adhesion, compressive and fatigue studies in the range of minus 150 to 600 degrees Celsius. Extrusion, compression molding, injection molding and supercritical CO2 microcellular foam processing are utilized.

Thin Film Tribology Laboratory

Research in this laboratory concentrates on thin film processing and characterization of next generation nanostructured materials for mitigation of friction and wear (tribological) in sliding and rolling devices. Processing equipment includes chemical vapor deposition (atomic layer deposition) and physical vapor deposition (sputtering) techniques. Characterization of nanoscale structure and tribochemistry is made through Raman spectroscopy and pin-on-disk rigs are used to evaluate the overall friction, wear and lubrication performance.

Computational Materials Group

The computational materials group utilizes simulation methods ranging from density functional theory, classical atomistic simulations such as large scale molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods, to continuum scale finite element analysis to study a wide range of material structures, defect processes, and structure-property relations. Major facilities include a 64 cpu Linux cluster, a number of desktop computers, and quantum mechanical, classical and continuum modeling software.