Professor Johnson and Dr. Atakan Peker, modern day alchemists, magically conjuring an amorphous golf club from deep within Caltech's Keck Laborabory
Professor Johnson's group does research on non-equilibrium and metastable materials. During the past decade, they have developed unusual metallic alloys which fail to crystallize during solidification at low cooling rates, thus forming "bulk" glasses. Research on the liquid alloys includes fundamental studies of rheology, atomic diffusion, crystallization kinetics, liquid/liquid phase separation, and the glass transition. Research on the solid "glassy" materials includes studies of elastic properties, and mechanisms of deformation, flow, and fracture. The group has developed composite materials which employ a metallic glass matrix to achieve unusual combinations of properties for structural engineering applications. Two large programs are under way at Caltech to advace the science and engineering of Bulk Metallic glasses: the Structural Amorphous Metals, or SAM project, funded by DARPA, and the Center for Science and Engineering of Materials (CSEM), supported by the National Science Foundation Materials Research, Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).
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