Meet the MiHTEE Lab: Materials in High Temperatures and Extreme Environments

Watch this video to learn more about the Materials in High Temperatures and Extreme Environments (MiHTEE) Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Its research focuses on several broad areas including advanced manufacturing, innovative moderators, and molten salt loops for both energy and national defense application.

Learn more  about the Materials in High Temperatures and Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Michigan.

Transcript

00:00:03 right answers are in hard to find places I direct the mighty lab which is the materials in high temperatures in extreme environments lab so this might include high temperatures high radiation Fields High mechanical stresses and sometimes all of these at the same time we can come up with new materials that can better withstand these environments for future

00:00:25 nuclear reactors I get to be at the Forefront of what is public knowledge and be able to push that a little bit further our lab group is so collaborative and the work culture is really amazing there are very few facilities that can do what we're trying to do we get to ask really fun engineering questions like how well does this seal hold up at 800 celsus we do

00:00:47 some really unique work with salt corrosion that no one else is doing in the world there's a lot of people working on a multitude of different projects and there's a lot of crossover so I think that's a really important skill to be part of the mighty lab is to be able to collaborate with other researchers I wanted something that was very Hands-On and involved you know I

00:01:02 don't mind doing the occasional computer work but I didn't want to sit behind a computer all day I get to take out my violent tendencies on samples in the [Music] LA ideas are welcomed over here even I find that ug students has sometime better ideas than a PG and even PA dog if you don't have curiosity then don't come whatever you want to learn

00:01:29 you can join the the main lab and everyone's friendly you can ask everyone get a different feedback and train yourself here we have the equipment for making materials but we also have a lot of the equipment for testing them which is not as common we have things like the Michigan ion beam laboratory for simulating radiation damage we have equipment for testing materials at the

00:01:51 high temperatures and in the environments we expect to see them in service it just feels awesome to use these machines like it it feels like I'm channeling the power of the elements to make new materials the science we do has a bigger purpose we're looking for students who want to save the world making things breaking things until we eventually make things that nobody else

00:02:16 has made before here in Mighty lab we are ready to build from scratch you can basically build your future here in the mighty lab we not only tackle hard problems we tackle the artist problems we're looking at molten salts we're looking at high pressures uranium we're looking at you know brillium there's just a mountain of things you need to do to do these very dangerous very complex

00:02:43 experiments and we tackle that problem and we do it successfully there isn't really a boring experiment to be had these techniques and these materials they're going to pave the way for future ideas and hopefully future Innovations in in nuclear power our job as nuclear material scientists is to design new materials that unleash the imaginations we challenge what can be done and

00:03:06 sometimes that's tough but we do it because we can [Music]