Robert W. Balluffi Receives Von Hippel Award for Distinguished Interdisciplinary Materials Research
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Robert W. BaUuffi Receives Von Hippel Award for Distinguished Interdisciplinary Materials Research
Robert W. BaUuffi Robert W. BaUuffi, whose research on grain boundàries in metals, ceramics, and semiconductors has shed considérable light on a wide range of important fondamental scientific and technological problems, will receive the 1990 Von Hippel Award at the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston. FoUowing the présentation, BaUuffi wiU deliver a guest lecture entitled, "In Pursuit of the Lattice Vacancy." A professor of physical metaUurgy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1978, BaUuffi is being recognized "for his séminal expérimental and analytical contributions, which hâve clarified our fondamental understanding of the atomic mechanisms of sintering, KirkendaU phenomena, dislocation clirnb, solid-state diffusion, the production and recovery of radiation damage, grain boundary structure and energetics in metals and ceramics."
Interdisciplinary Science BaUuffi's research has always sought fondamental answers to very basic questions, say his coUeagues, and this has required tapping knowledge from disciplines outside physical metaUurgy, in which he received his formai training. Although most of his research has dealt with metals (with some on semiconductors and ceramics) his experiments hâve nucleated simUar research on other materials. According to David N. Seidman, profes-
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sor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, who has known BaUuffi since 1962, "The classic lengthchange and lattice-parameter change expérimental techniques of Ralph Simmons (professor of physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and BaUuffi—on fcc metals and aUoys—hâve been appUed by Simmons and his students to ionic materials and to rare gas crystals. The lack of précise and accurate Simmons-Balluffi type experiments on bec metals and semiconductors has led to much controversy concerning the dominant point defect in thermodynamic equUibrium in thèse materials." Scientists including BaUuffi himself hâve taken his findings on grain boundàries in gold and appUed them to the study of ceramics and semiconductors. Also, his theoretical studies on the question of grain boundary énergies hâve led to much additional theoretical and expérimental research on the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of grain boundàries. "The field of grain boundàries has literaUy exploded since 1970," say s Seidman. "That was when Tilman Schober (senior research scientist, Kernforschungszentrum Jiilich, Germany) and BaUuffi published their now classic paper that so beautifoUy demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate grain boundàries with a known orientation and to study systematicaUy their dislocation structure by transmission électron microscopy." Merton C. Flemings, BaUuffi's coUeague at MIT, concurs. "Grain boundàries and grain boundary structure He at the heart of a wide variety of important technological problems," he says. "Professor BaUuffi's basic work is key to the understanding we are developing of thèse grain
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