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William D. Nix to Receive 2007 Von Hippel Award The 2007 Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s highest honor, will be presented to William D. Nix, the Lee Otterson Professor of Engineering emeritus in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Nix is being recognized for “original contributions on the deformation and failure of materials, particularly in the areas of thin films, small volumes, and hightemperature alloys; for pioneering mechanical test methods; and for educating and mentoring future generations of materials scientists.” Nix will accept the honor during the awards ceremony at the 2007 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston on Wednesday, November 28, at 6:00 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, where he will then present his award lecture. Nix has focused his research career on understanding the link between material microstructure and mechanical behavior. Beginning in the early 1960s, he studied and elucidated the high-temperature mechanical behavior of structural materials and then expanded his research into thin films, strain-gradient plasticity, and small-scale structures. Early in his career, Nix earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on dislocation theory and creep mechanisms. His insightful models for the high-temperature deformation of metals led to a quantitative and rational treatment of many high-performance metallic alloys that was not previously possible. One outstanding example is the scientific explanation of the creep mechanisms in oxide-dispersion–strengthened (ODS) superalloys, which are still among the metallic materials with the highest temperature capability. In the late 1980s, Nix recognized the potential of thin-film mechanical science for advancing microelectronics technology. Among Nix’s most prominent contributions to the development of new materials has been his fundamental research on defect processes in metallic and semiconductor films of submicron thickness. Nix’s work on defect processes in thin films resulted in the publication of a model to calculate yield stress as a function of film thickness. This highly acclaimed model
William D. Nix has become the benchmark for subsequent theories and simulations of thin-film strength. Another important contribution was his work on the development of nanoindentation techniques for studying the mechanical properties of materials in small volumes. Together with his co-workers, Nix has made further substantial contributions in the area of small-scale mechanics. These include clarification of the supermodulus effect, finite element calculations of thermal stresses in interconnect lines, plasticity in multilayers, stress voiding and electromigration in metal interconnects, and crystalline coalescence during film deposition. In 2005, Nix and his co-worker J.R. Greer studied size-dependent plasticity in submicron gold pillars and developed an explanation of that effect in terms of a dislocation starvation concept. Generations of Stanford students have benefited
