Professor Dravid gave talk on Elastic Strain Engineering Live Broadcast

Smaller is Stronger. Nanostructured materials such as thin films, nanowires, nanoparticles, bulk nanocomposites and atomic sheets can withstand non-hydrostatic (e.g., tensile or shear) stresses up to a significant fraction of their ideal strength without inelastic relaxation by plasticity or fracture. Large elastic strains, up to ~10%, can be generated by epitaxy or by external loading on small-volume or bulk-scale nanomaterials and can be spatially homogeneous or inhomogeneous. This leads to new possibilities for tuning the physical and chemical properties of a material, such as electronic, optical, magnetic, phononic and catalytic properties, by varying the six-dimensional elastic strain as continuous variables. By controlling the elastic strain field statically or dynamically, a much larger parameter space opens up for optimizing the functional properties of materials, which gives new meaning to Richard Feynman's 1959 statement, "there's plenty of room at the bottom."

Druring the Elastic Strain Engineering Live Broadcast held by MRS on May 6, Professor Dravid were invited as a speaker to talk about 'Strain Mediated Phenomena in Nanostructured Oxides and Chalcogenides'.