Abstract
Multiple facets of an innovative research endeavor involving high magnetic field processing will be highlighted for this very promising technology initiative for materials and process development. This approach has both scientific and industrial relevance with significant energy savings and environmental benefit ramifications and represents a major step towards achieving materials by design goals for the next generation of materials encompassing both structural and functional material applications. Our experimental and modeling research efforts are clearly demonstrating that phase stability (conventional phase diagrams) can be dramatically altered through the application of an ultrahigh magnetic field. This ability to selectively control microstructural stability and alter transformation kinetics through appropriate selection of the magnetic field strength is being shown to provide a very robust mechanism to develop and tailor enhanced microstructures (even potential bulk nanostructures through accelerated product phase nucleation and transformation kinetics) with potentially superior properties. The broad goals for this research are to demonstrate and document the influence of ultrahigh magnetic field processing on the phase equilibria and kinetics for ferromagnetic and paramagnetic material systems and to develop predictive capability based on first principle calculations.
