Graduate student Kyle Quillin completed a 10-week internship at Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, ID) as a part of his DOE-Nuclear Energy University Program Fellowship. As a part of this internship, Kyle performed in situ high temperature x-ray diffraction of Cr films deposited on SiC substrates by different physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods to understand microstructure and stress-state evolution over time as well as interfacial diffusion. In addition, Kyle conducted high resolution transmission electron microscopy and compositional analysis to study the extent of nanoscale atomic mixing generated at the interface by different coating processes. Kyle also performed room temperature and elevated temperature nanomechanical testing. The work aligns with Kyle’s graduate research thesis work at UW.