David E. Laughlin

ALCOA Professor of Physical Metallurgy
Professor, Materials Science and Engineering

Bio

Research Areas: Inorganic Functional Materials | Manufacturing & Materials Microstructure

David Laughlin is the ALCOA Professor of Physical Metallurgy, a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and also has a courtesy appointment on the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of CMU. He was the Editor of Metallurgical and Materials Transactions from 1987-2016. David is a graduate of Drexel University (1969) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973). He is the recipient of the G. T. Ladd Teaching Award (1975) and the B. R. Teare Award for Excellence in Engineering Education (1999). He is a co-recipient of the outstanding research award in 2003 in the College of Engineering and is Fellow of ASM International as well as TMS.  He has authored more than 475 technical publications in the field of phase transformations, physical metallurgy and magnetic materials.  He is the co-author of “Introduction to the Materials Thermodynamics” as well as co-editor of the three volume Physical Metallurgy.

 

Education

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research

The research interests of David E. Laughlin have centered on the investigation of phase transformations and the structure of materials by means of transmission electron microscopy. He has studied spinodal decomposition and ordering processes in several aluminum, copper and nickel based alloys as well as in III-V compounds by detailed analysis of their microstructure as well as electron diffraction patterns. Since 1986 he has been investigating the magnetic properties and microstructure of soft magnets (HITPERM), hard magnets (FePt and CoPt) and magnetic thin films for recording media and heads. Recently he has been exploring topological materials.

Publications

DE Laughlin, TB Massalski, Construction of equilibrium phase diagrams: some errors to be avoided, Progress in Materials Science, 100715, 2020.

A Perrin, DE Laughlin, ME McHenry, High Entropy Alloys: Magnetocaloric Effects, Elsevier, 2020.

X Lu, DE Laughlin, JGJ Zhu, On the conditions for ordered hexagonal mm2 Co3Pt, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 491, 165570, 2019.

DE Laughlin, Magnetic Transformations and Phase Diagrams, Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A 50 (6), 2555-2569, 2019.

CS Gorham, DE Laughlin, Crystallization in three dimensions: Defect-driven topological ordering and the role of geometrical frustration, Physical Review B 99 (14), 144106, 2019.

A Perrin, M Sorescu, V Ravi, DE Laughlin, ME McHenry, Mössbauer analysis of compositional tuning of magnetic exchange interactions in high entropy alloys, AIP Advances 9 (3), 035329, 2019.