ME 590/ENGR 590: Materials Characterization

FALL 2022

ME 590/ENGR 590: Materials Characterization

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Class # 5752 and 5758
TuThu 9:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
UND Leonard Hall, Room 214

Class # 5753 and 5757
UND Online

Prerequisites: Enrolled CEM graduate student or instructor approval for interested undergraduates.

Instructor: Dr. Sougata Roy, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Course Overview

This interdisciplinary course is a technical elective in the domain of materials and manufacturing science. Quantitative and qualitative material characterization techniques are used in a wide range of research sectors both applied and fundamental fields. This course is designed to discuss about fundamentals of some important and crucial material characterization techniques along with their respective applications. The field of scientific inquiry can vary (Mechanical/Electrical/Civil/Materials/Geological/Chemical/Petroleum/Basic Science i.e. Physics or Chemistry). Consequently, students from diverse backgrounds can attend this course. Interested students are encouraged to contact the instructor (email: sougata.roy@und.edu) for clarification regarding prerequisites or other course details, if any.

What you will learn

The main objective of this course is to enhance students’ understanding and appreciation for the field of material characterization. It will be accomplished using a combination of real-life examples, theoretical explanations and demonstrations. Specifically, by the end of this course students will be aware of a range of material characterization tools so that you can decide which instrument to use when you need specific information from your samples.

After successfully completing this course, you should be able to:

• Aware of fundamentals and working principles of major microscopy techniques in particular optical microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
• Explore different parts of scanning electron microscope, signal to noise ratio and its optimization
• Identify different modes of SEM imaging, their unique capabilities and drawbacks
• Recognize the potential of energy and wavelength dispersive X-Ray analysis on wide variety of sample types
• Understand the capabilities & shortcomings of X-Ray Diffraction and Auger Spectroscopy based material characterization tools.
• Assess the technical merits of material characterization data presented in scientific articles.