Category: News

21–23 October 2025 the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRNU MEPhI) will hold its traditional international school-conference on “Advanced Technologies and Methods for Materials Research”, part of the regular “New Materials” (NM-2025) scientific conference series.

Topics of the NM-2025 school-conference:

• Advanced technologies for producing materials for use in extreme conditions
• Methods for studying structural and functional materials

Details of the event’s topics, procedure and abstract formatting requirements can be found on the NM-2025 school-conference website: https://indico.particle.mephi.ru/e/NM2025.

The school-conference is organised into thematic sections. Sessions will be held as plenary sessions with review lectures by leading Russian and foreign specialists, with open discussion of key issues, and as sectional sessions with short oral presentations by participants accepted by the organising committee. Poster presentations are held in a separate section.

As part of the conference, a competition is held among young participants for the best work presented at the plenary and poster sections.

Abstracts of lectures and presentations will be published in the conference proceedings, indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI). Selected papers included in the school-conference programme will be published in indexed journals.

Applications for participation and abstracts are accepted until 3 October 2025 inclusive on the school-conference website.

Since last year, the Professor Boris Alexandrovich Kalin scholarship has been funded from the targeted endowment. The scholarship aims to develop the scientific potential of Department No. 9, attract talented young people to materials science, and support and encourage the department’s best students. In 2024, the scholarship was awarded to 3 master’s students studying “Materials Science and Technology of Materials”.

Today, the scholarship fund has already reached 3 million rubles per year, so from 2025 the eligible categories of applicants and the number of scholarship recipients will be expanded.

Since 2023, a targeted endowment for developing the scientific potential of Department of Physical Problems of Materials Science No. 9 has been established as part of the NRNU MEPhI Endowment Fund, which currently amounts to 33.2 million rubles. The endowment is named in honour of Boris Alexandrovich Kalin — DSc (Phys.-Math.), Professor, Head of Department No. 9 from 1984 to 2021, Honoured Scientist of the Russian Federation, and Honoured Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

At the laboratories of the University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei), the students spent a month familiarising themselves with equipment and conducting research on related scientific topics.

The Department No. 9 “Physical Problems of Materials Science” project led by Ivan Vladimirovich Fedotov, “Study of the structural-phase state in a composite amorphous-crystalline zirconium-based alloy produced by melt casting into a mould”, has won a competition held among young scientists and research groups led by young scientists at NRNU MEPhI. The project is devoted to studying the melt crystallisation process in order to establish the critical cooling rates for transitional amorphous-crystalline structures. The results obtained will make it possible to predict printing regimes for producing bulk amorphous-crystalline alloys using the SLM method.

Studying the characteristics of the transitional amorphous-crystalline structure formed in cast ingots will make it possible to determine the target cooling parameters of the melt obtained during selective laser melting. Implementation of the project will allow scientifically grounded approaches to controlling the microstructure and properties of amorphous alloys, including BMGCs, to be developed, and will create a basis for the industrial application of SLM in producing bulk amorphous products with enhanced ductility and a specified microstructure. The relevance of the project stems from the growing interest in additive manufacturing and the need to develop new materials with improved properties for high-tech industries such as aerospace, medicine and others.

As part of a technical tour of Science Island of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, participants visited the largest operating tokamak, EAST, the construction site of the BEST tokamak, superconducting materials laboratories, liquid-metal-loop materials research laboratories of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology, and other high-tech facilities.

From 23 to 26 June, Department No. 9 “Physical Problems of Materials Science” held a series of defences of final qualifying theses by bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate students. The event was a significant occasion in the scientific life of the department and the university as a whole.

The defences demonstrated a high level of preparation among the graduates, as noted by members of the state examination boards. The defences took place in an atmosphere of constructive dialogue between candidates and examiners. All participants demonstrated deep knowledge of their subject, the ability to apply theory in practice, and the ability to solve current scientific problems. The graduates’ research covered a wide range of contemporary areas of materials science.

We extend our sincere thanks to all members of the state examination boards for their professional approach to assessing the work and for their valuable recommendations. Special thanks go to the supervisors and lecturers for training highly qualified specialists.

Department No. 9 continues its tradition of high-quality training of specialists in materials science and invites prospective students to join the scientific community.

The results of the 8th season of the All-Russian student Olympiad “I Am a Professional” have been announced. In the “Materials Science and Technology of Materials” category, our department’s master’s students achieved excellent results: Veronika Kirillova was named the winner, and Ivan Kleshchev was among the prize-winners. The master’s students’ success confirms the high standard of education and research work at the department.

Congratulations to our students on their achievements, and we wish them further success!

The work “Study of the nanostructure of reduced-activation oxide dispersion-strengthened steels”, aimed at studying a new generation of radiation-resistant steels for advanced nuclear reactors, is being carried out under the supervision of S.V. Rogozhkin, DSc (Phys.-Math.). The work analyses changes in the nanostructure of these materials, in particular oxide particles and clusters, under the influence of irradiation and high temperatures, using a range of advanced analytical methods. The results will help identify optimal approaches to creating safer, more efficient and more resistant materials, which is critically important for the development of Russia’s nuclear power industry and the strengthening of its technological leadership.

Source: minobrnauki.gov.ru

The NRNU MEPhI Department No. 9 “Physical Problems of Materials Science” project led by Oleg Nikolaevich Sevryukov, “Effect of the compositions of rapidly quenched active filler alloys and high-temperature brazing regimes on the thermomechanical properties of metal-ceramic joints”, has won the “Fundamental and Exploratory Scientific Research by Individual Research Groups” competition, organised by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) in 2025. The project is devoted to creating new precision filler alloys that will be used to join advanced ceramics with metals.

Metal-ceramic joints are widely used across various industries. Metal-ceramic assemblies are used in the electronic, radio-electronic and electrical engineering industries, where they serve as housings for electrovacuum and semiconductor devices, hermetic switches, vacuum-tight connectors, electrical and optical vacuum feedthroughs, insulators and similar components. The most common pairing for producing such joints is 29NK alloy and alumina ceramic (often VK94-1 or VK100 grade ceramics). The rapid development of technology increases the operational requirements for such structures every year. Among these requirements are hermeticity and thermal resistance at operating temperatures, as well as the mechanical strength of the joints. Research into producing metal-ceramic joints dates back to the 1940s. At that time, the main research focus was developing a method for metallising ceramics with refractory-metal powders through firing, followed by brazing of the metallised ceramic. This technology involves multiple steps. The main achievement of this period was the industrial introduction of pastes consisting of 80–90% molybdenum/tungsten and 10–20% manganese with silicon additives. This technology remains the primary method for producing metal-ceramic joints at most enterprises today. Further development in this field led to the need to simplify the existing multi-step technology for producing metal-ceramic joints. This became achievable through the active brazing method, which is a single-step process. The essence of this method lies in using filler alloys doped with active elements (Ti, Zr). The active additives promote interaction between the filler alloy and the ceramic surface through redox reactions, ensuring wetting of the ceramic. However, there is limited and unsystematised data on the properties of brazed joints produced using such filler alloys. Sevryukov’s project plans to develop and produce 6 compositions of rapidly quenched filler alloys based on Ag, Cu and Ag-Cu, with Ti and Zr additives, for creating hermetic metal-ceramic joints between 29NK alloy components and VK100 ceramic. The work will study the effect of the brazing temperature-time regime on the interaction zones in the braze joint area. To study the thermal resistance of the joints, a structure will be used consisting of a cylindrical ceramic vessel brazed to a metal plug using a ceramic compensator. It is known that the design of the assembly significantly affects the ability to obtain hermetic joints, owing to stresses arising during cooling after brazing. Accordingly, finite element calculations will be carried out to optimise the design of the specimens used for hermeticity and thermal-resistance testing, in order to minimise stresses in the braze joint area. Using these specimens, the relationship between the number of hermetic joints and the number of thermal cycles will be established. Shear tests will be carried out to determine the mechanical properties of the brazed joints produced under different brazing regimes. This data will expand the body of knowledge on the formation of the structural-phase state of metal-ceramic joints during active brazing using rapidly quenched silver- and copper-based filler alloys, and will allow assessment of the effect of filler alloy compositions and brazing parameters on the complex stress state, strength and thermal resistance of the specimens.

The “Ministry of Science and Higher Education Trainee” project trains personnel for public administration in science and higher education.
The project’s goal is to build a talent pool for the state civil service.

This year, 4,675 applications were submitted from 86 regions, from which the 100 best were selected. Following the selection process, Andrey Bocharnikov, a 2nd-year master’s student at the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Engineering, Department of Physical Problems of Materials Science, made it into the top 100 finalists of the project.