MnM² lab - KU Leuven
Welcome to the website of the MnM² lab at the Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven!
Our team, under the supervision of prof. Joris Everaerts, performs research on micro- and nanomechanics of materials, in-situ nanomechanical testing and residual stress evaluation at very small scales.
We aim to develop novel test methodologies in order to study the mechanical and fracture behaviour of metals and to enable mechanical characterization of small samples such as coatings, thin layers and nanoelectronics in a range of environmental conditions.
News
Updates on MnM² lab members, publications, conferences and more!
Our new MnM² website is now up and running - welcome!
Many thanks to Devan Anil (FLICKSBYTE) for the logo design.
Our new paper on the mechanical properties of spray-coated nanocellulose coatings is out now in Surface and Coatings Technology. You can read it here. Many thanks to Pieter Samyn at Sirris for the collaboration and congratulations to all involved MnM² lab members!
The MnM² lab successfully contributed to the department's participation to the 'Dag van de Wetenschap' by organizing a 'next level microscopy' demo! Many thanks to Akshay & Kento for their contribution.
Wout van Wesemael has joined the Department of Materials Engineering as a PhD researcher under the supervision of Prof. Fei Zhang. He will be co-supervised by Prof. Joris Everaerts and will collaborate with the MnM² lab for nanoindentation measurements on tooth enamel across different animal species.
Joris Everaerts will give a seminar for the KU Leuven Institute for Micro- and Nanoscale Integration (LIMNI) on the use of in situ SEM nanomechanical Testing to study residual stresses and fracture.
Three MnM² lab members attended the 11th European Conference on Residual Stresses. Akshay also presented the progress in his PhD research, showing the link between the microstructure and microscale residual stresses in cut titanium. Congratulations!
The MnM² team
Akshay Mundayadan Chandroth
Ph.D. researcher
Akshay obtained his Master's degree in Materials Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden after a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in India. His Ph.D. topic focuses on unraveling the link between microscale residual stresses and texture in Ti-6Al-4V using FIB-DIC residual stress analysis and other techniques.
Wout Van Wesemael
associated Ph.D. researcher
Wout's PhD topic is part of a project that aims at a multi-scale characterization of tooth enamel across species, supervised by prof. Fei Zhang from the Advanced Ceramics and Powder Metallurgy group. He is collaborating with the MnM² lab to perform nanoindentation mapping experiments on tooth specimens.
Kento Takahashi
Ph.D. researcher
Kento obtained his Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering at Toulouse INP-ENSIACET after an Integrated Preparatory Cycle (CP2I) at ECPM Strasbourg. His Ph.D. topic is part of an FWO project that focuses on nanoscale testing of polishing-induced surface changes in metals, using mainly nanoindentation mapping and FIB-DIC techniques.
Aman Gupta
associated Ph.D. researcher
Aman obtained a VLAIO Baekeland mandate to do a Ph.D. on the development of a computation assisted material selection approach for multi-material metal additive manufacturing, supervised by prof. Kim Vanmeensel from the Material Aspects of Additive Production Techniques and Welding Processes group and in collaboration with Amnovis. He is collaborating with the MnM² lab to perform nanoindentation mapping experiments on multi-material interfaces.
prof. Joris Everaerts
Head of MnM² lab
Joris Everaerts is an assistant
professor at the Department of Materials Engineering of KU Leuven since 2021. He
obtained his Ph.D. at the same university in 2017, after which he
worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and at
EPFL in Switzerland.
Infrastructure & techniques
Feel free to contact us for more information!
Electron microscopy
Our lab relies on the Core Facility Electron Microscopy of the Department of Materials Engineering, which contains a wide range of microscopes and preparation facilities. More info can be found by the clicking the link above.
FIB-DIC ring-core milling
We perform focused ion beam - digital image correlation (FIB-DIC) ring-core measurements to evaluate residual stresses in very small gauge volumes down to pillars of 1 µm in diameter. This includes depth-resolved measurements, enabling evaluation of near-surface residual stress variation with a depth resolution of <100 nm. Feel free to contact us for more information!
Advanced nanoindentation
Our state-of-the-art nanoindenter enables rapid CSM nanoindentation measurements across sample surfaces to achieve 'mechanical microscopy' or mapping of hardness and stiffness variation at the microstructural level. Furthermore, such mapping can be performed in a temperature range from -150 °C to 800 °C.
In-situ nanomechanical testing
Our state-of-the-art nanomechanical testing device fits inside the vacuum chamber of electron microscopes, enabling a variety of measurements such as micropillar compression, microcantilever bending, MEMS characterization and more, at temperatures between -150
°C and
800
°C.
Publications
Most recent publications of MnM² lab members. See full list here.
"Mechanical properties of spray-coated nanocellulose coatings"
Surface and Coatings Technology (2025), vol. 496, 131601
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfcoat.2024.131601
"A feasibility study on femtosecond laser texturing of sprayed nanocellulose coatings"
Carbohydrate Polymers (2024), vol. 340, 122307
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2024.122307
"A Method for Semi-automatic Mode Recognition in Acoustic Emission Signals"
Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation (2024), vol. 43 (3)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-024-01085-6
"Residual stresses in surgical growing rods"
Journal of Biomechanical Engineering (2023), vol. 146, 011003
https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4063745
"Grain-level residual stress distribution at dwell fatigue crack tips in a nickel-based superalloy"
Scripta Materialia (2023), vol. 235, 115634
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2023.115634
Contact
The MnM² lab is part of the Materials Performance and Nondestructive Testing group at the Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven.
Contact details of Prof. Joris Everaerts can be found via KU Leuven who's who.