Brent Fultz received his undergraduate degree from MIT, and his Ph.D. from U. C. Berkeley in 1982. He was a Presidential Young Investigator; he also received an IBM Faculty Development Award and a Jacob Wallenberg Scholarship. He consulted for an electronics testing company, Everett Charles Technologies, for the Defense Science Board, and was a member of the Science Advisory Board of Actium Materials. Fultz has authored or co-authored over 300 publications. With his friend, Prof. J. Howe of Univ. Virginia, he has published a graduate-level textbook on diffraction and microscopy of materials (now in its 2nd edition). Brent Fultz is leading the ARCS spectrometer project at the Spallation Neutron Source. (The ARCS webcam is sometimes interesting to watch.) Scientific computing offers new opportunities for elevating the sophistication of neutron scattering experiments, and new science is the main goal of Distributed Data Analysis for Neutron Scattering Experiments, DANSE .

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One topic of Fultz's research is how atom vibrations in solids affect the entropy and thermodynamic stability of materials. Vibrational entropy was new to materials science, and its importance was unexpected. Fultz's group is measuring phonon spectra of materials by inelastic neutron scattering, and learning the reasons for differences in vibrational entropy of different alloy phases. Inelastic neutron scattering is sensitive to magnetic and electronic excitations in solids, and several cases were found wher these make major thermodynamic contributions to the entropy of solids. In some cases it is possible to determine experimentally the partition function of the solid, from which all its thermodynamic properties can be derived. The promise of neutron scattering has led Fultz into the the ARCS project. The DANSE software project emphasizes doing new types of neutron science with the assistance of modern scientific computing.

The global "energy problem" is of paramount societal importance, but the ultimate technical solutions are unknown. Research on energy-storage materials can help address this issue. For several years Fultz's group worked on materials that store lithium (used in rechargeable batteries, for example). They are now starting work on the fundamentals of materials that store hydrogen by adsorption. The work is focused on understanding the interactions of hydrogen molecules with surfaces, with the goal of learning how to optimize the hydrogen-storage potential of new materials by altering the structure and chemistry of surfaces.

Brief descriptions of recent research results are given in the Fultz Group site.