Overview

The Laboratory for Metastable Materials Science and Technology (MMST) grew from a local key laboratory supervised by Hebei Province. In July 2006, the lab was officially endorsed as a State Key Laboratory, and it successfully passed the assessments in 2008, 2013 and 2018.

Metastable materials, notwithstanding featured by the thermodynamically metastable states, are widely present in nature, and have been used as structural and functional materials, covering metallic, inorganic and organic materials such as glasses and diamond. Metastable states can be achieved via the control of composition, structure and morphology. Research highlights in the lab involve: (1) theoretical design and performance prediction of metastable materials; (2) metastable structural materials; (3) metastable functional materials; (4) special preparation technology of metastable materials and (5) unconventional service properties of materials.

Currently, the laboratory has one member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, tow members of Chinese Academy of engineerings, nine scholars selected as Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professors, eight professors recognized as Distinguished Young Scholars from the NSFC, one chief scientist of “973” project, two excellent young scholars awarded by the NSFC, three Young and Middle-aged Leading Talents in Scientific and Technological Innovation awarded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, one selected in the “National Ten-Thousand Experts Plan”, and eight selected in State-Level New Century Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Talents program. The laboratory has excellent innovation group of NSFC, MOE innovation team, innovation team of national defense science and technology, and “Giant Plan”innovation group of Hebei Province.

The laboratory is mainly composed of the School of Material Science and Engineer with an area of 14000 m2, the High-Pressure Scientific Research Center of 8000 m2, the Clean Nano-Energy Center of 2000 m2 and the Metastable Material Preparation Center with a building area of 3300 m2. The total asset is around 300 million RMB. The laboratory mainly involves seven major platforms: (1) analysis and detection; (2) high pressure experiment; (3) severe deformation; (4) Metastable Material Service Testing; (5) special preparation and molding; (6) machining and conventional processing and (7) computing and simulations.

The MMST Lab operates within the research community of metastable materials as a base for scientific research, scholar training, and academic exchange. The lab is not only active in outreach but also cooperates with internationally recognized institutes, including the facilitation of academic exchanges.