Mo Li Professor Georgia Institute of Technology Materials Science and Engineering 771 Ferst Drive, N.W. Atlanta, GA 30332-0245 Office:  Love Bldg., Room 365 Phone: 404.385.2472  | Fax: 404.894.9140 mo.li@mse.gatech.edu For more information about Dr. Li’s research, click here. B.S. Materials Science, Central South University, China Ph.D. Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology Professor Mo Li received his Ph.D. in applied physics in 1994 from California Institute of Technology under the supervision of Professor William L. Johnson and Professor William A. Goddard. After a brief staying as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and the Argonne National Laboratory, he joined Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York. He came back to academia in 1998. From 1998 to 2001 he was an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Currently he is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Research Interests Field: Computational materials science and materials theory Goal: To understand fundamental properties and processes of materials Professor Li's research focuses on understanding fundamental properties and processes of materials, and predicting material behaviors. His current research focuses on the following areas: (a) phase transformations, (b) mechanical properties of materials, (c) statistical mechanics of non-equilibrium process and transformations in materials. Currently, he has the on-going research projects on (1) nanoscale materials, (2) metallic glasses, (3) equilibrium and metastable liquids, and (4) irradiation effects on materials. These systems are characterized by metastability, small scales, and lack of long-range order. The unique difficulties presented in these materials challenge the conventional approaches developed for systems at equilibrium, with long-range order or nearly perfect or free of defects. To address the difficulties, his research employs theoretical and, in particular, computational methods. The primary purpose of the computational approach is to search for the information about the basic processes, mechanisms, and properties of these materials that are difficult or impossible to get by experiment alone, and to test and validate ideas and concepts for theoretical models. The approaches used in his research are a blend of those from statistical physics, solid state physics, materials science, metallurgy, mechanics and computational methods. His research focuses on algorithm development, simulation, and theoretical analysis. Selected Recent Publications "Assessing the critical sizes for shear band formation in metallic glasses." Applied Physics Letters 91, 231905, 2007 “Atomistic simulation of correlations between volumetric change and shear softening in amorphous metals." Physical Review B 75, 094101, 2007 "Free volume evolution in amorphous solids subjected to mechanical deformation." Materials Transactions 48, 1816, 2007 "Atomistic simulation of correlations between volumetric change and shear softening in amorphous metals." Physical Review B75, 094101, 2007 "Model for estimation of critical packing density in polydisperse hard-disck packings." Physica A - Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 381, 230, 2007 "Nucleation and Melting from Nanovoids." Nano Letters 6, 2284, 2006 "Atomic scale characterization of shear bands in amorphous metals." Applied Physics Letters 88, 241903, 2006 "Calculation of solid-liquid interface free energy: a classical nucleation theory based approach." Journal of Chemical Physics 124, 124707, 2006 "Molecular dynamics simulation of intrinsic and extrinsic mechanical properties of metallic glasses." Intermetallics 14, 1005, 2006 "Effects of surface imperfections on deformation and failure of amorphous metals." Applied Physics Letters 87, 0319110, 2005 "The effect of microstructure on magnetic phase transition in an Ising model." Physica A - Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 355, 355, 2005 "Nature and extent of melting in superheated solids: a solid-liquid coexistence model." Physical Review B72, 052108, 2005 "Atomistic simulation study of deformation mechanisms of nanocrystalline cobalt." Acta Materialia 53, 3893, 2005 "Test of classical nucleation theory via molecular dynamics simulation." Journal of Chemical Physics 122, 224510, 2005 "Atomic size effect on critical cooling rate and glass formability." Physical Review B 70, 013450, 2005 "Differences between superheating and supercooling." Journal of Chemical Physics 123, 151002, 2005 Return to top