The thawing of the Cold War helped stimulate materials scientist Zuhair Munir's research on electric fields and combustion. Twenty years later, Munir is still looking for new discoveries.

"I enjoy my work very much. Every time you open a door, there are other doors to open," he said. "It's a source of great pleasure to me."

On May 2, Munir, distinguished professor in the department of chemical engineering and materials science and former dean of the College of Engineering, will be showing his colleagues through some of those doors as he delivers the annual Distinguished Research Lecture of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate. The award, the highest honor presented by the senate to its members for scholarly research, includes a gala dinner, the lecture and presentation of a medal by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef.

"Zuhair Munir is a gentleman and scholar of great integrity who cares deeply about his students. His influence is truly global and I cannot think of a better ambassador for UC Davis' principles and excellence," said Enrique Lavernia, dean of the College of Engineering.

"I think it's the greatest honor that the faculty of UC Davis awards to other faculty," said Robert Powell, chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. The award has been presented annually since 1942. It was last awarded to an engineering professor in 1970.

"Zuhair's research has always been in a state of innovation," Powell said. "He always looks toward new problems, and applies fundamental principles to solve those problems."

"Dr. Zuhair Munir is an outstanding scholar and researcher, and, above all, is an extremely generous and attentive teacher to those of us who have followed in his footsteps," said John Moore, professor and head of the metallurgical and materials engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines. "He has been an inspiration to all of us."

Munir grew up in Iraq and moved to the U.S. as a teenager, gaining his bachelor's degree and doctorate from UC Berkeley. He held a number of academic and consulting jobs and was a faculty member at San Jose State University and Florida State University before joining UC Davis in 1972. He was associate dean for graduate studies in the College of Engineering from 1980 to 2000, when he was appointed dean, serving until 2002.

The current running through Munir's career is how electric fields can influence materials processing. He is interested in new ways to make new kinds of materials with unique mechanical, optical or electrical properties.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he studied how electric fields affected evaporation from single crystals on surfaces, using electron microscopy to show the movement of atomic-scale ledges. That work won him the National Science Foundation's "Creativity in Research Award" twice, in 1982 and 1985.

In April 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech in East Germany and hailed "combustion synthesis" or "self-propagating high-temperature synthesis" (SHS) as a major scientific achievement of Russian scientists. The Soviet Union had established a large institute to exploit the technology. That got the attention of the U.S. government, and Munir's lab was one of those selected for funding to work on the topic.

Together with Birch Holt at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Munir was the first U.S. academic to begin work on combustion synthesis, Moore said.

Developed from rocket technology, combustion synthesis is a method for processing powdered ingredients into new types of materials. A mixture of powdered starting material is ignited, and a molten combustion wave moves rapidly through the mixture at temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Celsius, leaving a new material behind.

The process can be used to make materials with a wide range of properties -- hardness, heat resistance, electrical conductivity, transparency, magnetism -- depending on the starting material and the exact conditions used. While Munir's work focuses on fundamental research, some examples of applications include materials for turbine blades that run at high temperatures and under high mechanical stress, transparent ceramics for lasers, and nanostructure oxides for use in fuel cells.

In the 1980s, Munir's laboratory group began applying their knowledge of electric fields to combustion synthesis and soon found that this had a profound effect on the chemical reaction, speeding it up, broadening the list of materials that can be made and fine-tuning the nature of the final material.

Low energy cost, short reaction time and the ability in some cases to make unique materials make combustion synthesis an attractive method, but it is not easy to control, said Alexander Mukasyan, research professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Electric fields are an effective way to control the process, which can lead to new products that cannot be made in any other way, he said.

"Field-assisted SHS gives you more freedom in material design, and that is why it is so popular and effective," Mukasyan said. Munir's work established the basis for this new, fruitful direction, and he helped to popularize it around the world, Mukasyan said.

Munir is particularly interested in creating nanostructured materials with extremely small crystal sizes. Such materials can have properties quite different than materials made up of larger grains, even if they are made of the same chemical compound.

Using electric fields, Munir's laboratory can make materials with crystallite sizes as low as 10 nanometers, he said. The group was the first to make bulk amounts of cubic zirconia (zirconium oxide, more commonly known for its use in making simulated diamonds) with structure on this scale. Munir is continuing to work in this area, which could lead to new developments in fuel cell technology.

In 2000, Munir and Benjamin Shaw, professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis, received a grant from NASA for experiments on combustion synthesis in microgravity. Three of Munir's students have now made flights on a NASA plane, nicknamed the "Vomit Comet," that makes a series of diving maneuvers to simulate weightlessness for up to 25 seconds at a time.

Removing the effects of gravity makes it easier to study the effects of the electric field on the reaction and might also open up ways to make entirely new materials in low-gravity environments. Results from the studies are currently being written up for publication.

Munir's work on combustion synthesis may have grown out of Cold War rivalry, but Gorbachev's "Perestroika" policy soon brought more collaboration between U.S. researchers and their Russian counterparts. In 1988, the head of the Soviet Institute of Structural Macrokinetics and Materials Science, Alexander Merzhanov, attended an international meeting on the topic in San Francisco, visited UC Davis and stayed with Munir. A few months later, Munir joined the first U.S. scientific delegation to visit the institute near Moscow, as well as research facilities in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan.

Munir's research has earned him a number of significant awards, including the John Jeppson Medal from the American Ceramics Society in 2005, which recognizes distinguished scientific, technical or engineering achievements in ceramics. He is also the recipient of the Humboldt Research Award (Germany), the Medal of Honor from the International Organization of Self-Propagating High Temperature Synthesis, and is listed as a highly cited author in materials science by the Institute for Scientific Information. Munir is a fellow of the American Ceramics Society and the American Society for Metals. In his career, he has published more than 400 scientific papers and holds 12 U.S. patents and one international patent, with other applications pending.

Munir describes science as a gradual process, but one that brings rewards at every step.

"There is great satisfaction in making incremental steps toward solving problems," he said. "You feel that each time you make a step, you are moving to the next step."