The Institute is composed of two research teams, Advanced Steel Research Institute and frontier research center for materials structure.  

The research team of "advanced steel and material" was established on the basis of the research group "Theory of Phase Transformation and Its Applications ", which was assembled by Academician Zuyao XU in 1998. Currently there are 1 academician, 4 professors / researchers, 2 associate professors, 1 associate researcher, 3 assistant researchers, 1 senior engineer and 2 engineers. In the past years, more than 300 SCI papers were published in the journal of Acta Mater. and other international mainstream journals. The institute led the 13th Five-Year key R & D project "Research and Development of Special Steel Based on Rational Design for High-end Equipment" and was responsible for the National Natural Science Key Fund, focusing on research and development of the third generation of Automobile steels, nickel-based low-temperature steels and wear-resistant steels. The institute owns more than 40 invention patents on a new heat treatment quenching-partitioning-tempering (QPT) process, shape memory alloys, room temperature mercury-free liquid alloy, wear-resistant pure jewelry gold, processing and preparation of electric pulse materials and so on.             

The frontier research center for materials structure (FRCMS) was established in 2014. The FRCMS team focuses on microstructure and properties of advanced materials and development of advanced functional materials recent years. Currently, the FRCMS includes 2 professors (1 tenure professors), 4 associate professors (2 tenure track associate professors) and 1 senior engineer. The research group has made pioneering contributions to materials research - including microstructure and properties of bulk metallic glasses, three-dimensional nanoporous metals, deformation behaviors of nanostructured metals, superhardness ceramics, and published more than 30 papers in high impact journals such as Science, Nature Nanotech, PRL , Nat. Commun., Adv Mater, JACS, Ang. Chem. Int. Ed., Acta Mater, etc.

Main Research Fields:

• Phase transformations in solids, high strength and ductility steels;
• Phase transformations, control of micro-structure and properties in functional metallic materials;
• Phase stability in nano materials;
• Exploration of new technologies in the industrialization of high strength steels;
• Mechanical performance in materials and its micro-scale mechanism.
• Microscopic analysis on the structure of advanced materials