Bruker at TMS 2026

March 15 – 19 | San Diego Convention Center | San Diego, CA

Meet us in San Diego for The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society Annual Meeting, where we’ll be showcasing our industry-leading technologies for macro- to nanoscale materials characterization. Connect with Bruker experts on the expo floor to hear case studies, learn about our technology, and ask questions. Visit us in Booth 312 to even see the new Hysitron TI 990 TriboIndenter in person. Our team is excited to help you discover how Bruker’s advanced solutions can drive your materials research. See you there!

Talk to Bruker Experts

Our applications scientists and product specialists will be available throughout the show to discuss workflows, answer questions, and help you find the right solutions for your research or production environment. Schedule a meeting with our team here.

Conference Host:
The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

Conference Venue:
San Diego Convention Center | San Diego, CA

To find out more about this event or the products and technology featured in it:

Oxygen content in fluoride salts is critical for controlling redox chemistry, corrosion, and fission product behavior in molten salt reactors (MSRs). Inert Gas Fusion (IGF) offers a direct method for oxygen analysis but faces skepticism when applied to fluoride salts. High temperatures are needed to thermodynamically drive oxygen reactions with carbon, which can exceed the boiling point of lithium, causing volatilization and secondary reactions—such as fluorides attacking the metal or glass components that cause spurious oxygen signals or contaminations. These effects raise concerns about accuracy, precision, and signal linearity. This work brings together Natura Resources, defining nuclear-grade requirements; Bruker AXS, optimizing IGF instrument design; and USREL, developing and validating the method with oxygen-doped standards and spike recovery. Together, we demonstrate that with tailored thermal profiles, fluxes, and calibration protocols, IGF can provide accurate, reproducible oxygen analysis in salts like FLiBe and FLiNaK, supporting broader deployment in nuclear material qualifications.

Date: 3/16/2026
Time: 2:40 PM - 3:00 PM
Location: Room - Cobalt 501AB
Track Type: Nuclear Materials

Authors: Christian Zuehlke; Michael Stoddard; Kayden Alderson; Jaron Wallace; Eric Slater; Joshua Tewell

Affiliations: Bruker AXS SE; Natura Resources; Utah San Raphael Energy Lab; Utah San Raphael Energy Lab; Utah San Raphael Energy Lab; Bruker AXS Inc.

Structural materials for next-generation applications need to endure increasingly demanding conditions, including coupled high temperatures and mechanical loading. Nanoindentation can complement bulk scale data by providing a highly localized response, but combining high strain rate and high temperature has been a bigger challenge comparatively at the small scale. Recent advances in instrumentation have allowed Berkovich nanoindentation at strain rates of >100 1/s while at high temperatures, which will be presented here. The behavior of tungsten, which was used as a model system since it is frequently employed as a refractory material, will be explored in terms of its high strain rate behavior, the temperature dependence of the mechanical behavior and its strain rate sensitivity. Changes in material properties with strain rate and temperature will be discussed, as well as challenges and outlooks on the applications of the technique.

Date: 3/18/2026
Time: 10:10 AM - 10:30 AM
Location: Room - Aqua 310A
Track Type: Mechanics of Materials

Authors: Kevin Schmalbach; Eric Hintsala; Sanjit Bhowmick

Affiliations: Bruker Nano Surfaces and Metrology

Professor William Gerberich made invaluable contributions to the field of fracture at length scales ranging from centimeters to nanometers. Here we present collaborative work published with Professor Gerberich over the past few years. We show that sample size effects on the mechanical response present major challenges in correlating microscale measurements to macroscale measurements, especially for ductility and fracture. For brittle materials with small plastic zone size (e.g., Si), microbeam bending shows promising results. For semi-brittle (e.g., W) materials, the plastic zone size becomes comparable to the sample dimension and conventional analysis methods prove difficult to apply. We address the challenges of diminished sample size to evaluating fracture behavior at the microscale through investigation of the Ductile-to-Brittle Transition (DBT) in Si, SiC, and W. With the DBT as our benchmark to bulk fracture behavior, we present the interplay of sample size with the onset of increasing plasticity on fracture behavior.

Date: 3/16/2026
Time: 10:50 AM - 11:20 AM
Location: Room - Aqua E
Track Type: Mechanics of Materials

Authors: Nathan Mara; Kevin Schmalbach; Youxing Chen; Eric Hintsala; William Gerberich

Affiliations: University of Minnesota; Bruker Nano Surfaces; University of North Carolina - Charlotte; Bruker Nano Surfaces; University of Minnesota

Local measures of strength and toughness are important for designing microstructures and devices that are resistant to failure but these experiments are more complicated in practice than their bulk counterparts. These micro-mechanical measures of local fracture toughness evolved from the indentation-based efforts of Nihara and Lawn, which can be scaled to a plasticity index using hardness and modulus acquired by high-speed mapping. Focused Ion Beam machined notched specimen fracture has progressed to quantitatively investigate local microstructure for fracture. One sample shape evolution is the pre-notched double-cantilever bending beam, which is self-arresting to allow for detailed post-mortem investigation and can be tested as a function of temperature. Secondly, a wedge loaded double cantilevered structure is presented that allows for multiple stable crack growth and arrest cycles, which enables an R-curve measurement in silicon.

Date: 3/16/2026
Time: 11:20 AM - 11:50 AM
Location: Room - Aqua E
Track Type: Mechanics of Materials

Authors: Eric Hintsala; William Mook; Brad Boyce; Frank DelRio; Douglas Stauffer

Affiliations: Bruker Nano Surfaces and Metrology; Sandia National Laboratories; Sandia National Laboratories; Sandia National Laboratories; Bruker Nano Surfaces and Metrology

Nanoindentation can give a highly localized fingerprint of the materials elastic and plastic properties via the measured reduced modulus and hardness, respectively. Many thousands of indents can be done in a reasonable amount of time with modern instrumentation which can cover the sub-micron to mm-scale, allowing for structure-property relationships to be determined in complex heterogeneous materials. Machine learning can assist in this process in numerous ways, which will be discussed here. First, automatically identifying phases as regions of similar properties through clustering will be presented alongside a method to evaluate the uncertainty and bias of this approach. Secondly, Bayesian optimization will also be employed to improve instrument efficiency in terms of placing indents in the most needed areas. Lastly, workflow improvements for the correlation of the indentation properties to co-located structural data will also be detailed.

Date: 3/18/2026
Time: 4:30 PM - 4:50 PM
Location: Room - Sapphire EF
Track Type: Advanced Characterization Methods

Authors: Eric Hintsala; Bernard Becker; Benjamin Stadnick; Kevin Schmalbach; Ude Hangen; Douglas Stauffer

Affiliations: Bruker Nano Surfaces and Metrology

Advanced nuclear technology depends on materials that perform reliably under high temperature, corrosion, and irradiation conditions. Additive manufacturing (AM) offers a cost-effective route to produce components with tailored properties not achievable by conventional methods. However, the heterogeneity of AM materials complicates qualification and makes high-throughput data collection challenging and costly. This work focuses on an accelerated framework for evaluating creep properties in L-PBF 316H stainless steel. Specifically, high-temperature nanoindentation strain rate jump tests are conducted up to 800°C to extract key parameters such as strain rate sensitivity. Combined with data from bulk creep testing, these parameters are used as inputs to predict creep rupture in L-PBF 316H using fewer bulk tests to rupture than with conventional approaches. We present elevated temperature mechanical property maps of L-PBF 316H and correlate them with discrete microstructural features via SEM/EBSD and TEM and extend these relationships to observed bulk behavior.

Date: 3/19/2026
Time: 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM
Location: Room - Cobalt 501C
Track Type: Nuclear Materials

Authors: Minh-Tam Hoang; Eric Hintsala; Kevin Schmalbach; Douglas Stauffer; Lars Hansen; Amanda Dillman; Andrea Alaniz; Laurent Capolungo; Robin Montoya; John Carpenter; Ben Eftink; Nathan Mara

Affiliations: University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Bruker NANO; Bruker NANO; Bruker NANO; University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities; University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities; University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Bruker's next-generation Hysitron TI 990 TriboIndenter® sets new standards for performance, flexibility, and usability in nanomechanical and nanotribological characterization. A comprehensive advancement of Bruker’s industry-leading TriboIndenter platform, every aspect of TI 990's measurement and analysis process features updated technologies designed to remove the normal limitations of nanoindenter systems. As such, this system features the most measurement modes available and delivers high-precision measurements in the broadest range of laboratory environments.