Announcements

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Metals 2022 Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Metals Editorial Board and editorial team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Metals. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround are maintained.

There are two winners this year, Dr. Wolfgang Löser and Prof. Dr. Weimin Wang, and here is a short interview with Prof. Dr. Weimin Wang.

Photograph for SEM test

Prof. Dr. Weimin Wang is a professor at the College of Materials Science and Engineering and Key Laboratory of Liquid–Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials, Shandong University, China. His research interests include glassy alloys, computation science in materials and electrochemistry in metals. He has published 150 papers in international journals.

My current research focuses on Fe-based and Al-based glassy alloys. The project includes the effect of pulse laser processing on crystallization and corrosion resistance of Fe-based glassy alloys, the effects of DC Joule heating on corrosion resistance and magnetic anisotropy of Fe₇₈Si₉B₁₃ amorphous alloys, effects of the stress field on the structure and properties of Al₈₆Ni₉La₅ amorphous alloy, and the structural, magnetic anisotropy and crystallization behavior after external field treatments of Fe-based amorphous alloys. This work tried to discover the external fields of glassy alloys and tried to search for some new strategies to improve their functional properties.

My work also involves the electrochemical behavior of Fe-based glassy alloy in alkaline solution and the effect of magnetic field on its corrosion resistance, insight into the backbone structure and corrosion properties of Al-Ni-RE amorphous alloys on solute elements addition, and the effects of cooling rate and solution concentration on corrosion resistance of Fe-based amorphous alloys. These works mainly use electrochemical analysis and try to discover new methods for passivating metallic alloys.

In short, the microstructure and properties of metallic alloys are my interests.

2. Which research topics do you think are of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?

(1) Magnetic materials. With the continuous development of the power electronics industry, the trend of miniaturization, integration, and high efficiency has put forward higher requirements for the soft magnetic properties of magnetic materials. Traditional soft magnetic materials, such as silicon steel and ferrite, cannot combine low-loss characteristics at high frequencies with high saturation magnetic induction. New amorphous and nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials, as a newly emerging metal material in recent years, have become an ideal choice for preparing a new generation of high frequency and high-efficiency motor materials due to their unique comprehensive soft magnetic properties such as high resistivity, low coercivity, high saturation magnetic susceptibility, and corrosion resistance.

(2) Metallic powders. The powder metallurgy industry has developed rapidly, and the production of metal powders has increased year by year. With the advantages of low cost, high degree of freedom of alloy composition, fast cooling rate, large-scale production, and excellent comprehensive powder performance, atomization has been able to account for over 80% of the current total powder production. It is one of the ideal processes for preparing fine amorphous powders.

(3) High entropy alloys. Traditional alloy design concepts combine one or two primary elements with secondary elements to produce many combinations. Related work has reached the bottleneck period. In the pursuit of alloys with special microstructure and properties such as high strength, new design concepts such as high entropy alloys (HEAs) have emerged. It is usually composed of at least 5 main elements, each of which has an atomic content of 5 to 35 at%. High entropy alloys have simple random solid solutions rather than ordered and/or intermetallic compound phases, such as disordered face-centered cubic (fcc, A1), disordered body-centered cubic (bcc, A2), ordered fcc (L12), ordered bcc (B2), and hexagonal close-packed (hcp, A3). It has unique properties different from traditional alloys: high strength and hardness, unique magnetism, superior corrosion and oxidation resistance, super high fatigue strength, good tribological properties, good high temperature softening and creep resistance, excellent radiation resistance, high thermal stability, and superior low-temperature mechanical properties.

3. Have you ever encountered any difficulties while conducting research? How did you overcome them?

The first difficulty is the shortage of funding. Just after defending my Ph.D. degree, I obtained a position at my university where I finished my Ph.D. degree. I am lucky because I have not had to join the job market and apply for positions by mailing my CV. But the funding is difficult for me to reach. I remember that the starting support of our university is only RMB 10,000, and a new computer costs half of that. Since then, I have had to apply for various government foundations and try to contact companies.

During this difficult time, I applied for a post-doctoral program at Nanjing University and Humboldt Foundation in Germany. After that, I obtained funding from the NSFC committee and other departments. However, the second difficulty arises in my research life.

The second one is how to work with graduate students. Firstly, the number of students is not enough. In some years, I do not have even one student entering my group. Every fall, I am worried about newcomers. In addition, after new students join my group, how to work with them is not easy to answer.

In short, the difficulties also bring much happiness to my life.

Young scientists should first have a good theoretical foundation, and their university and postgraduate study is of great importance. Mathematics, physical concepts, and computation coding are very important for exploring detailed projects.

At the same time, they should have good communication skills with their colleagues and students. When entering the workplace, knowing how to obtain effective information from friends, partners, colleagues, and peers and improving their academic level is very important.

In addition, a kind of persistence and perseverance help develop an academic style; this growth is very important, but it is very difficult.

Open access (OA) journals have an increasing tendency for advanced publishing groups because they are quick, highly efficient, broadly spreadable, and of large volume. OA has many positive impacts on the authors: its quickness, authors can get efficient feedback from the referees and adjust their research routines on time. For my students, the quick and high-level reviewing comments are very helpful for the next work. As we know, the length of time that it takes for a student to undergo a Ph.D. is three years, which is not that long and is mixed with other things. A quick response from the OA journal is needed for Ph.D. candidates.

The large volume is also advanced. In China, the volume of postgraduate students is increasing every year, and many universities require publishing records. Hence, the supply and demand are matching the increasing speed.

There is also a shortage of OA journals. Sometimes they focus on the profits rather than the quality. Such phenomena are adjusted by the self-cleaning characteristics of academic society.