Applied Physics Seminar

**Pizza Lunch for attendees on Watson Patio directly following talk

Abstract:

The fascinating nature of nanomaterials has opened the door to novel approaches for conducting research in the field of radiative energy conversion, storage and cooling technology. The ability to control thermal radiative properties of objects is of great interest in diverse areas like solar and thermophotovoltaic energy conversion, wavelength selective reflection and thermal emission/absorption, passive radiative cooling, solar-driven water desalination, battery thermal management system, and camouflage in military applications. Thermal transport of nanoengineered materials gets enhanced dramatically in comparison to their bulk counterparts. Thermal radiation at the nanometer scale is significantly different from classical or macroscopic radiative transport since near-field effects such as interference, diffraction, and tunneling of surface waves play a significant role. Nanoscale thermal transport has shown great potential applications for use in manipulating macroscale energy systems and thermal/optical sensing. This talk will mainly focus on the static and dynamic control of small-scale radiative thermal transport and light manipulation.

More about the Speaker:

Prof. Yi Zheng is an Associate Professor with expertise in near-field radiative thermal transport and functional energy materials in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Director of Nano Energy Laboratory at Northeastern University (Boston, MA), an elected Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Faculty Fellow of the NASA Glenn Research Center, and Founder and President of Planck Energies. He received Ph.D. and M.S. from Columbia University (New York, NY) and B.S. from the Tsinghua University (Beijing, China). He has published over 100 journal papers, filed 9 patents, and secured research grants over $5M from diverse sources including NSF, NIH, NASA, DARPA, ONR and US Air Force. Prof. Zheng's achievements are reflected in some prestigious honors and awards including NSF CAREER Award, NIH RI-INBRE Early Career Development Award, NASA Glenn Faculty Fellowship, ASTFE Early Career Researcher Award, Raymond Viskanta Award, Fulbright US Scholar Award, Soleeva Energy Innovation Award, and MassVentures Acorn Innovation Award.