search articles:     from the issue of April 21, 2005         UNL team wins $3M DoD grant  BY KIM HACHIYA, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS A team of engineers - led by UNL's Yongfeng Lu, associate professor of engineering - have received a three-year grant exceeding $3 million to refine a process that coats surfaces with thin diamond films.     Lu The team is composed of engineers from UNL and the University of Missouri-Rolla. The grant came from the Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research and brings the possibility of an additional $2 million in years four and five of the study. The grant was awarded in March and announced April 14 by UNL. Joining Lu on the team are Hai-Lung Tsai of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla and head project leader for UMR; Lan Jiang, mechanical engineer, UMR; Matthew O'Keefe, metallurgical engineer, UMR; Robert Schwartz, materials science engineer, UMR; and Xinwei Wang, mechanical engineer, UNL. The process under exploration by the team was developed in the mid-1990s by Michigan-based QCC, Inc. That firm used over-lapping pulsed lasers to deposit thin coatings of diamond and diamond-like carbon on surfaces. The underlying reasons for the process are unknown - the technology has preceded the science. That makes it hard to improve the process or extend it to other material systems. Lu's team will attempt to tease out the "how" of the technology. "If we can understand the science of the phenomenon," Lu said, "and understand the principles behind it, we can use it for other materials besides diamonds." The ability to coat surfaces - making them stronger, lighter and more resistant to corrosion or abrasion - has many applications. Military hardware is an obvious example, but the ability to coat surgical tools, auto bodies, airplanes or even golf clubs have been posited as potential uses. The diamond coating increases the hardness of the surface and protects it from humidity, abrasion, corrosion or other deformations. The QQC firm used overlapping light pulses from three types of high-powered lasers - eximer, yttrium-aluminum-garnet or YAG, and carbon dioxide -- to vaporize a thin layer when scanned across a material such as steel. This creates an electrically charged, superheated plasma of iron atoms that bonds to the surface as a new substance. But the fundamental science of how this works is still unknown. The UNL-UMR coating technique will be "customized" to specific coating/substrate systems using three laser systems - a resonance absorption laser, a UV laser, and a controlled plasma cooling and coating formation laser. The team will work to establish the knowledge of the physics behind the process and develop a way to do this in "open atmosphere" rather than a vacuum, allowing coatings to be deposited on items like ships or airplanes. The team will test this system both theoretically, using computer models, and experimentally using the lasers. The grant was one of 33 awarded through the DoD's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Program. More than 120 proposals were submitted in the competitive grant process. The DoD awarded $146 million over the five years to 27 universities. The MURI program is designed to address large multidisciplinary topic areas representing exceptional opportunities for future DoD applications and technology options. The awards provide long-term support for research, graduate students and laboratory instrumentation development. Three post-doctoral scientists will be supported at UNL and two at UMR; each institution will also support four graduate students. In addition, undergraduate students at UNL will work with Lu and Wang. Lu said UMR's Tsai initiated the proposal effort and realized the joint collaboration would allow the two universities to be more competitive. Lu said two seed grants provided by the UNL Office of Research helped the team prepare its winning proposal. Prem Paul, UNL's vice chancellor for research, said the proposal is an example of building competitive strength through multidisciplinary collaboration. He noted that only about a quarter of the submitted proposals won funding, and the institutions that received funding are among the nation's most prestigious. GO TO: ISSUE OF APRIL 21 NEWS HEADLINES FOR APRIL 21 Students help extend legacy of Melvin Jones Learning communities to expand this fall Sketches offer new look at UNL UNL team wins $3M DoD grant A Piece of University History Libraries take steps to curb plagiarism Students, clients team up to design software UNL helps tsunami victims from half a world away 732057S34555X