Dr. Yang is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the innovative design and fabrication of advanced metallic materials for structural and functional applications, including the high-entropy alloys, intermetallic materials, high-temperature superalloys, deep cryogenic alloys and electrocatalysis materials. His current work is primarily focused on the control of nanoprecipitation, grain-boundary characters, and atomic structures by using multiple state-of-the-art techniques, such as the 3D atom probe tomography (3D-APT), high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HETEM), and 3D printing.
Intermetallic materials are bestowed by diverse ordered superlattice structures together with many unusual properties. In particular, the advent of chemically complex intermetallic alloys (CCIMAs) has received considerable attention in recent years and offers a new paradigm to develop novel metallic materials for advanced structural applications. These newly emerged CCIMAs exhibit synergistic modulations of structural and chemical features, such as self-assembled long-range close-packed ordering, complex sublattice occupancy, and interfacial disordered nanoscale layer, potentially allowing for superb physical and mechanical properties that are unmatched in conventional metallic materials. In this talk, we would like to introduce the historical developments and recent advances in ordered intermetallic materials from the simple binary to chemically complex alloy systems. We are focused on the unique multicomponent superlattice microstructures, nanoscale grain-boundary segregation and disordering, as well as the various extraordinary mechanical properties of these newly developed CCIMAs. Finally, perspectives on the future research orientation of this new frontier are presented.