Project Description:

The goal of this project is to investigate fundamentals of thermal transport in newly available 2D materials that will enable greatly enhanced thermal transport and highly efficient thermal rectification. For example, the interaction of helical light of different chirality with symmetry-breaking materials is manifested as an energy-carrying current in different directions, which provides a means of control of heat transport. Previous works at Purdue have demonstrated a large heat current carried by the chiral topological surface state (TSS) in topological insulators (TI) and resulting controllable thermoelectric effect. This project will further investigate and demonstrate enhancement and control of thermal transport along several directions: (1) using various types of quantum materials with their unique energy carriers or energy transfer mechanisms such as chiral TSS in 3D TI and chiral fermions in Wyle semimetals, (2) hyperbolic phonon polaritons for greatly enhanced radiative thermal transfer comparable to phonon conduction. The project will have a large impact on thermal management of numerous emerging devices including quantum devices built upon these materials. It will also impact applications beyond thermal transport and thermal control to other areas including energy harvesting, sensing, and detection.

Start Date:

2023

Postdoc Qualifications:

Ph.D. in, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Material Science, or relevant background for thermal transport and/or physics of transport in two-dimensional materials.

Co-Advisors:

Xianfan Xu, xxu@ecn.purdue.edu, James J. and Carol L. Shuttleworth Professor of Mechanical Engineering, https://engineering.purdue.edu/NanoLab/

Yong Chen, yongchen@purdue.edu, Karl Lark-Horovitz Professor of Physics and Astronomy, http://www.physics.purdue.edu/quantum/

Bibliography:

• Luo, Z., Tian, J., Huang, S., Srinivasan, M., Maassen, J., Chen, Y.P., and Xu, X., 2018, "Large Enhancement of Thermal Conductivity and Lorentz Number in Topological Insulator Thin Films", ACS Nano, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b06430
• Segovia M., and Xu, X., 2021, "High Accuracy Ultrafast Spatiotemporal Pump-Probe Measurement of Electrical Thermal Transport in Thin Film Gold", Nano Lett., DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c02210
• Huang, S., and Xu, X., 2021, "Optical Chirality Detection Using a Topological Insulator Transistor", Adv. Optical Materials, DOI: 10.1002/adom.202002210
• Salihoglu, H., Iyer, V., Taniguchi, T., Watanabe, K., Ye, P., and Xu, X., 2019, "Energy Transport by Radiation in Hyperbolic Material Comparable to Conduction". Adv. Funct. Mater., DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201905830
• Salihoglu, H., Nam, W., Traverso, L., Segovia, M., Venuthurumilli, P.K., Liu, W., Wei, Yu., Li, W., and Xu, X., 2020, "Near-Field Thermal Radiation between Two Plates with Sub-10 nm Vacuum Separation", Nano Lett., DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02137