Graeme Murch Award
During the recent DSL (Diffusion in Solids and Liquids) Conference hold in Florence, Italy, June 2022, Dr. Esakkiraja Neelamegan (currently post-doc by Apl.-Prof. S. Divinski) has received a prestigious Graeme Murch Award. The Graeme Murch Award was for the first time granted in the 19-year history of the DSL Conferences and it is the highest distinction given by the DSL conference organizers. This award recognizes the contributions of early career scientists (up to 5 years of research experience following Ph. D.) within the wider field of diffusion research.
Dr. Esakkiraja conducted his PhD study at the Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in the research group of Prof. Dr. Aloke Paul (who was a former AvH Fellow at our Institute and worked with Apl.-Prof. Dr. S. Divinski). Dr. Esakkiraja contributed largely to the development of novel pseudo-binary and pseudo-ternary couple methods which have broken the paradigm of interdiffusion in multi-component alloys with the number of components larger than three. He performed a series of fundamental experiments which for the first time provided an access to the quantitative determination of the (pseudo-binary) interdiffusion coefficients in multi-component alloys. Even intrinsic diffusion coefficients were convincingly shown to be accessible via these novel approaches, together with systematic accounting for the vacancy wind factors.
The current research work of Dr. Esakkiraja is directed to the combination of the two fundamental techniques of diffusion studies in the multi-component alloys, i.e. the (radio)tracer and interdiffusion couple methods, in different systems including multi-principal element alloys.
We congratulate Dr. Esakkiraja Neelamegan with this prestigious Award and wish further successes in his carrier!