Howard Sheng

Howard Sheng

Professor of Materials Science

Office:
Telephone:
Fax:
E-mail:
Research I, Room 370
703-993-8576
703-993-9300
hsheng@gmu.edu
Mailing Address
Department of Computational and Data Sciences
College of Science
George Mason University
4400 University Dr., MSN 6A2
Fairfax, Virginia 22030

 

Research Projects : Embedded Atom Method (EAM) Potential Table

Current Research Interests

Dr. Sheng's research interest focuses on understanding the structure and property relationships of metastable materials, such as metallic glasses and nano-structured materials. Materials as such are characterized by their lack of long-range atomic periodicity (as in metallic glasses) or by their high degrees of defects (as in nano-structured materials). Owing to their unique structural features, these emerging materials exhibit unusual physical properties and play an important role in advanced technologies. Currently, Dr. Sheng's research area covers several challenging topics on the frontier of metastable materials research: (1) Atomic-level structural analysis of amorphous materials; (2) Phase transitions in glasses and liquids; (3) Properties and their atomistic mechanisms of metastable materials. His research endeavors involve extensive computer modeling and simulation of materials, varying from first-principles calculations based on quantum mechanics to large-scale classical molecular dynamics to continuum analysis. In addition to computer simulation, Dr. Sheng's research incorporates state-of-the-art structural characterization employing synchrotron X-ray diffraction conducted at Advanced Photon Source. His research goal is to develop new computational algorithms and approaches to effectively deal with difficult problems in materials research, to understand fundamental issues in materials science, and to design new materials of scientific and technological importance.

Education
Ph.D. 1997 - Institute of Metals Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Materials Science.

Courses Taught

Recent Publications

  • "Nature of Atomic Bonding and Atomic Structure in the Phase-Change Ge2Sb2Te5 Glass",M. Xu, Y.Q. Cheng, H.W. Sheng, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 103, 195502 (2009).
  • "Atomic Level Structure in Multicomponent Bulk Metallic Glass", Y.Q.  Cheng, E. Ma, H.W. Sheng, Phys. Rev. Lett.,102, 245501 (2009).
  • "Atomic packing in multicomponent aluminum-based metallic glasses", H.W.  Sheng, Y.Q. Cheng, P.L. Lee, et al., ACTA  MATERIALIA, 56, 6264-6272 (2008).
  • "Polyamorphism in Metallic Glass", H.W. Sheng, H.Z. Liu, Y.Q. Cheng, P.L. Lee, W.K. Luo, S.D. Shastri, and E. Ma, Nature Materials, 6, 192 (2007).
  • "Atomic Packing and Short-to-medium Range Order in Metallic  Glasses", H.W. Sheng, W.K. Luo, F.M. Alamgir, J.M. Bai, and E. Ma, Nature 439, 419-425 (2006).