Kan received his Bachelor and Master degrees in Nuclear Engineering in Sun Yat-sen University in China and did his PhD (2017.10-2020.12) in the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) & Chimie ParisTech-Université Paris Science&Lettre (PSL) in France. His PhD focused on the irradiation behavior of Ni-based fcc model alloys for a better understanding of radiation damage in austenitic steels deployed for Gen IV reactors. In pursuit of his career in academia, Kan joined the team in UoB since May 2021 as a postdoctoral research fellow, expending his field from fcc to bcc materials, to develop novel bcc-superalloys for supercritical CO2 application within H2020 project COMPASSCO2.
Project: H2020 COMPASSCO2 – Components’ and Materials’ Performance for Advanced Solar Supercritical CO2 Powerplants
His focus is on (i) the design of new alloys and demonstration&tailoring of their microstructure using electron microscopy; (ii) the demonstration of the mechanical properties, environmental (corrosion and irradiation) resistance of studied alloys in collaboration with other EU research groups. His work has an emphasis on advance electron microscopy to pursue fundamental mechanism for the alloys’ resilience under representative end-application conditions.
Techniques employed:
- Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) related technique: conventional TEM for dislocation analysis, Scanning TEM (STEM)-EDS
- Focus Ion Beam (FIB): preparation of TEM samples and needles for Atom Probe Tomography (APT), FIB combined with flash polishing
- Atom Probe Tomography (APT)
- Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM): SE/BSE imaging, EBSD, EDS, Slip trace analysis
- Ion and electron irradiation (in-situ) experiment
- SRIM for radiation damage calculation
Techniques learning:
- Mechanical test: small punch creep test
- Corrosion experiments and scale analysis
- Proton/neutron irradiation