Engineering Materials and Metrology Tools for Thermal Management

Abstract:
As researchers develop new materials and systems, thermal transport is often key to performance, safety, and reliability. For instance, in battery cells, interfaces and low conductivity pathways can lead to high temperatures that can lead to thermal runaway. In portable and wearable electronics, limited heat dissipation pathways lead either to temperatures that require throttling device performance or that degrade the system. The Marconnet Thermal & Energy Conversion (MTEC) Lab focuses on (1) the design, development, and validation of novel experimental metrology tools for characterizing multi-functional properties of materials across length and temperature scales; (2) enhanced understanding and control of fundamental transport and energy conversion mechanisms through multi-scale computational modeling; and (3) strategic, physics-based design and development of materials with multi-functional capabilities.

This talk will describe several recent examples from my group of engineering materials to achieve targeted performance objectives, along with the development of new metrology tools for understanding thermal transport. We build from steady state to transient and high-powered heat dissipation systems for electronics cooling and other applications illustrating combined experimental and modeling approaches. These current and past projects provide a foundation for our new research directions related to thermal transport and energy storage.