Heat under the microscope: Uncovering the microscopic processes that govern thermal transport Austin J. Minnich, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:30–12:00PM EEB 248 Thermal transport is a ubiquitous process that plays an essential role in nearly every technological application, ranging from space power generation to consumer electronics. In many of these applications, heat is carried by phonons, or quanta of lattice vibrations. Compared to other energy carriers such as electrons or photons, the microscopic properties of thermal phonons remain remarkably poorly understood, with much of our understanding still based on semi-empirical studies from over fifty years ago. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to uncover the microscopic processes that govern thermal transport by phonons using both experiment and computation. In particular, I will describe a new experimental technique that has enabled the first direct measurements of phonon mean free paths in a wide range of crystalline solids. I will demonstrate how these insights are advancing applications ranging from thermoelectric waste heat recovery to radio astronomy. Austin Minnich is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in 2006 and his PhD from MIT in 2011, after which he started his position at Caltech. He is the recipient of a 2013 NSF CAREER Award.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:21:31 +0000
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