STM DIMI Uniroma3

During the years 2008-2013, several leading Material Scientists decided to spend a period of research at “Roma TRE” working with Dr. Sebastiani. Among them: prof. Alexander Korsunsky (university of Oxford), prof. Chris Eberl (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), prof. Yang-Tse Cheng (University of Kentucky) and prof. George M. Pharr (University of Tennessee), who will be hosted in Rome for two months in 2013.

His wide imagination and enthusiasm in research have always been recognized by all his international collaborators and research advisors. His major achievements can be summarized as follows:

1)      Research on residual stress analysis on a micron-scale. This is one of the major contributions of Dr. Sebastiani to the scientific community and is actually one the key elements of this project. In the last few years, he developed innovative methods for the analysis of residual stress and Poisson’s ratio with sub-micrometer resolution, based on focused ion beam (FIB) controlled material removal, coupled with digital image correlation (DIC) to probe the attendant relaxation strains. The original  paper that was originally published in 2009 has rapidly become one of the most cited works in the field of FIB-DIC methods for residual stress analysis.

2)      Research on nano-mechanical characterization of thin films and small scale structures. This research activity has been focused on the assessment of the mechanical properties of nanostructured materials and thin films by the use of nanoindentation testing. The research was aimed at discovering and characterizing the effects of specimen size on the plastic deformation mechanisms, e.g. indentation size effects, indentation pop-in and micro-pillar compression testing, thin film hardness, residual stress and mechanical behavior of Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoparticles.

3)      Research on thin film modeling and production. Dr. Sebastiani has recently demonstrated the possibility of using finite element modeling (FEM) to design multilayered thin films with appropriate composition and thickness to reduce stresses at interfaces and through-thickness stress gradient, thus improving coating adhesion. Furthermore, the obtained results demonstrated that the model predictions can be validated by scratch and/or indentation adhesion tests. The work forms the basis for engineered coatings by design for a wide range of industrial applications.

Marco Sebastiani should be considered as a “Starter” since his PhD degree was awarded in 2008. He strongly believes that this is the right point of his career for a fellowship in the United States, to expand his cultural horizons and establish stable connections with the world leading groups in his field.

This is part of a dream that he is now pursuing as a long term objective, i.e. to build up in Italy a scientific community of experts in the field of nano-mechanical testing of materials and small scale structures, which is still missing in our country , even though it would be extremely important for both basic research and industry.