Martin Harmer

Martin Harmer, Lehigh University

A Commentary on Complexions: Conception, Controversy and Adoption

Abstract
What are interface complexions and how has this concept evolved? What has been the controversy behind this subject during its evolution? How can the concept of complexions be applied to design, tailor and engineer materials with controlled microstructures and greatly improved material properties and performance? How widely has it been successfully applied in other disciplines? What are the obstacles to getting a new concept adopted by a community and how can they be minimized? What are the future predictions, directions and needs in complexions research? If you are interested in these sorts of questions I welcome you to participate in this plenary lecture and share your thoughts.

Biography
Martin Harmer is the Alcoa Foundation Professor Emeritus of Material Science and Engineering and Senior Research Scientist at Lehigh University, and Director of the Lehigh Nano Human Interfaces Presidential Research Initiative. He studied ceramics at Leeds University in England from 1972 to 1980, where he graduated with a first class honors B.Sc. degree and a Ph.D. in ceramics, and he also received a D.Sc. degree from Leeds in 1995. He conducted his doctoral research on the fast-firing of pure and doped alpha alumina under the supervision of Professor Sir Richard Brook. During his Ph.D. he spent one year on a graduate fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, learning advanced techniques in transmission electron microscopy under the guidance of Professor Gareth Thomas. Dr. Harmer joined Lehigh University in 1980. He directed the Lehigh Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology until 2015. From 2015-17 he was Senior Faculty Advisor for Research Initiatives in the Rossin College of Engineering before taking up his current position as Director of the Lehigh Nano Human Interfaces Presidential Research Initiative. He also currently Directs a 5-year $25M Cooperative Agreement research project with the Army Research Laboratory on “Lightweight High Entropy Alloy Discovery (LHEAD)”, in collaboration with The Ohio State University and Louisiana State University.
Dr. Harmer has supervised 65 Ph.D. students and 25 post-doctoral researchers and published over 300 papers. His research has focused on understanding the fundamental mechanisms of interfacial transport and microstructure development in inorganic materials. His work has led to fundamental discoveries about the nature of grain boundaries, including the breakthrough experimental discovery that grain boundaries exhibit phase-like behavior (called “grain boundary complexions”), which has provided new insight into long-standing mysteries in material science, such as the origin of abnormal grain growth in ceramics and the cause of grain boundary embrittlement in metal alloys. He has received numerous awards including the American Ceramic Society’s Distinguished Life Member Award, the W. David Kingery Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Robert B. Sosman Lecture Award.
Harmer is a United States Coast Guard Licensed Merchant Marine Officer and the Captain of a 39ft sportfishing vessel called the “Cheeky Monkey III”.