Skip to main content

Lance Patten

Lance first joined the Nanoscale Materials and Device Group (NMDG) during the summer of
2013 as an undergraduate research assistant. He worked for both the NMDG and Dr. Peter
Müllner’s research group working on magnetic shape-memory alloys (MSMAs), mainly Ni-Mn-
Ga. The projects he was working on as an undergraduate involved single crystals and thin films
of Ni-Mn-Ga. The single crystal experiments involved indenting single crystals and then
analyzing/categorizing their response. For thin films, Lance categorized their magnetic response.
Lance started in the group at the beginning of his senior year in Materials Science and
Engineering. His senior project was on the “Grain Size Refinement of Alloy 617 for use in
Intermediate Heat Exchangers” sponsored by Idaho National Laboratory.
After graduation, he began to pursue a graduate degree in materials science. For a year, Lance
was a graduate research assistant in the Radiation Materials Science Group and Xiong
Electrochemical Energy Materials Group where he studied the irradiation effects on titanium
dioxide nanotubes. He correspondingly performed Monte Carlo simulations and heat transfer
calculations to control irradiation damage on the titanium dioxide nanotubes. Lance earned an
internship at Micron Technology, Inc. in their surface science laboratory. As an intern he was
able to perform his own characterization experiments using atomic force microscopy with data

analysis and comprehensive follow-up reports. Lance also had exposure to additional surface
characterization techniques including AES, EBSD, and etc.
After the internship and a year of school Lance graduated with his Masters of Engineering in the
summer of 2016. In fall of 2016, he returned to graduate school to join the Excitonics team
working towards a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. In January 2020 he joined the
Quantum DNA research group as a Research Associate. In his spare time, he enjoys a balance
between being outside and inside.