Alan Brothers, Presidential Fellow 2005-2007
Materials Science and Engineering

From The Graduate School Quarterly, Spring 2005:

When Alan Brothers talks about metallic glass, he's not discussing the transparent aluminum used to build a giant, lightweight aquarium in an old Star Trek movie. ("Beam up the hump-backed whales, Scotty!") He's describing something nearly as incomprehensible - amorphous metal.

Amorphous? How can a solid substance have no shape? In the world of materials science and engineering, an amorphous material is one like glass that on the atomic level does not have a regular crystalline structure.

"I work with alloys of zirconium, niobium, copper, nickel and aluminum, "Brothers says. "The atoms are so dissimilar in size, chemical reactivity, and other properties that they can't arrange themselves into patterns. They just throw up their hands and give up. It's called the frustration principle."

What Brothers is doing with these incompatible materials is creating a new type of strong, but light-weight, foam that looks and feels a bit like rigid BrilloT and may have myriad possible applications in fields ranging from aerospace to medicine. Brothers is not the first researcher to investigate amorphous metals, but he is the first to work with these materials rather than with palladium, the rare and expensive element previously used by researchers. The objective, Brothers explains, is to use materials available enough to make eventual use of the metallic glass foam commercially feasible.

Brothers, who says he likes to be the first person to solve a problem, notes that there's usually a good reason any problem hasn't already been solved. Because no one had created foams with the metals he was using, there was no equipment and no known methodology for doing so. He had to invent both, scrounging components from various sources, inventing as he went along.

"Trying to make a material never made before took two solid years, in which I often had nothing to show except my effort," Brothers says. One thing he learned from the experience, and the advice he'd give to freshly-minted graduate students, is "Never give up."

Also interested in musical theater, public speaking, and mythology, Brothers is eager to discuss his experiences with the other Presidential Fellows who, he is convinced, share his values of commitment, persistence, and patience in the face of unequal odds.

Advisor David Dunand is confident Brothers' capability of drawing rapid connections between various topics and his wide range of interests will make him a valuable member of the Society. Not only is he a good listener, Dunand says, but also an excellent speaker and writer. In fact, Brothers has already published his work in Applied Physics Letters and Advanced Materials, journals that rarely accept articles on structural materials.