Teaching and Research in Nanoscale Heat Transfer

Dr. Zhuomin Zhang
Professor, George W. Woodruff School of ME, Georgia Tech

Date: Monday, April 7, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Room: ELAB 38

Abstract

An overview of the recent research activities in my group is presented, along with a discussion of some teaching experience in ME 6309 Nanoscale Heat Transfer, a newly developed course that will be offered to DL students beginning Spring 2009. A comprehensive textbook on Nano/Microscale Heat Transfer has been written and published. Recent research in my group includes both theoretical and experimental investigation of nanoscale thermal radiation. We have designed and demonstrated coherent thermal emission from one-dimensional photonic crystals. We have performed a thermodynamic analysis of near-field thermophotovoltaic systems based on fluctuational electrodynamics. We have used the energy streamline method to depict the directions of photon energy propagation across a nanoscale vacuum gap between two SiC slabs, where coupled surface phonon polaritons play a major role to enhance phonon tunneling and near-field radiative transfer. Our research findings may be applied to direct energy conversion systems and thermal management of nanodevices.

Presenter Bio

Zhuomin Zhang is ASME Fellow and a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering thermophysics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. He worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Florida prior to joining Georgia Tech in Fall 2002. Professor Zhang’s research interests are in the areas of micro/nanoscale heat transfer, with applications to optoelectronic devices, semiconductor manufacturing, and energy conversion systems. He has written a textbook on Nano/Microscale Heat Transfer (McGraw-Hill, 2007) and authored/co-authored over 85 journal papers and 4 book chapters, received 2 patents, and given over 60 invited and 100 contributed presentations. Professor Zhang was a recipient of the Pi Tau Sigma Outstanding Teacher Award for 1997, the Sigma Xi Junior Faculty Research Award for 1999, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for 1999, the Heat Transfer Division Best Paper Award for 2000, and the AIAA Thermophysics Best Paper Award for 2005. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Thermophysics and is an associate editor of the Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer and the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer.