Tag: mse

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Who is Studying the Failure Mechanisms of Electrical Wire Terminals at Michigan Tech?

Micrograph of a wire on a substrate with a 500 micron scale marker.

An Advanced Metalworks Enterprise undergraduate student team, sponsored by Lear Corporation, is studying the performance of copper electrical wires in automobiles. Corrosion is the most common failure mechanism of wires used in crimp connectors; deformation in the wire terminal’s tin plating can cause additional contact issues within the connector. Electron microscopy aids in pinpointing the location of corrosion products on the wire and observing deformation in the tin plating. With this analysis, the team can now explore ways to improve the wire quality or crimping mechanism to minimize wire failures.

Image taken by Eli Harma and Reese Eichner, senior undergraduate materials science and engineering students, on Philips XL 40 ESEM.

Learn more about the Advanced Metalworks Enterprise at MTU: AME Website

Visit the Applied Chemical and Morphological Analysis Laboratory’s webpage to learn more about our shared facility and instruments available to the Michigan Tech research community: ACMAL

Who is Studying Miniature Magneto-optic Devices at Michigan Tech?

Four images on different scales showing pillar arrays on a surface.

The successful fabrication of miniature optical components is key for progressing current optical technologies. A family of such miniature optical components must be able to efficiently rotate linearly polarized light at small scales. Estefanio Kesto, under the guidance of Dr. Miguel Levy, is studying the interaction between light and ferromagnetic iron garnet nanostructures. It has been observed that the polarization rotation of linearly polarized light, known as the magneto-optic response, traveling through such a nanostructure will be enhanced. The ferromagnetic iron garnet nanostructures pictured above, which enhance the magneto-optic response, are being studied to further miniaturize polarization rotators and other interferometric components. Additionally, Professor Levy and his research group are diving into the unexplored region of magneto-optic beam splitting and its applications in classical and quantum computing.

Pillars fabricated and image taken by Estefanio Kesto, undergraduate student in electrical engineering, using ACMAL’s Hitachi FB-2000A FIB, Hitachi S-4700 FE-SEM, and Asylum Research MFP-3D Origin+ AFM.

Read more about the Dr. Miguel Levy’s research in the following articles:

All-dielectric magnetic metasurface for advanced light control in dual polarizations combined with high-Q resonances

Nonreciprocal magneto-optic beam splitting

Two-dimensional array of iron-garnet nanocylinders supporting localized and lattice modes for the broadband boosted magneto-optics

Visit the Applied Chemical and Morphological Analysis Laboratory’s webpage to learn more about our shared facility and instruments available to the Michigan Tech research community: ACMAL