Mesoscale Transport and Energy Conversion
Shaping the spectrum of thermal radiation: nanostructures for efficient solar power and buildings
News
April 2019
A special issue of JPE on “Thermal Photonics in Energy” has been published. It includes a guest editorial by Andrej Lenert (UM), Sheng Shen (CMU) and Yi Zheng (URI) which introduces the contributions and highlights recent developments in the field.
Zach Berquist (2nd year PhD candidate) receives an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, while Michael Veksler (UG) receives an honorary mention. Congrats to both!
March 2019
Our publication in Journal of Photonics for Energy, led by Sean McSherry, looks at how near-field electroluminescence enhances the energy flux in solid-state heat engines and analyzes which heat engines benefit from near-monochromatic emission.
November 2018
Our project on robust and spectrally-selective aerogels has been selected by the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.
Congratulations to Sean McSherry on receiving a poster award for his work on thermal transport in van der Waals metamaterials at the 2018 LNF Symposium!
October 2018
Congratulations to Vinod Raman for his selection to attend the Future Leaders in Chemical Engineering Symposium at @NCState!
July 2018
ACS Photonics publication, led by Tobias Burger, in collaboration with Stephen Forrest’s group, proposes strategies for enhancing the spectral selectivity of thin-film III-V thermal photovoltaics and evaluates their impact on efficiency.
Recent Physical Review Applied paper was selected as an Editor’s Suggestion. The paper, by Andrej Lenert and colleagues at MIT, Harvard, Purdue, and U-Wisconsin, describes a radiative thermal runaway phenomenon observed due to a VO2 solid phase transition.
June 2018
Journal of Optics publication in a Special issue on new materials for nanophotonics, led by Hannah Kim, proposes a new approach for radiative cooling to low temperatures using infrared-transparent nanoporous materials, and develops a model for evaluating various structures and material compositions.
May 2018
Congratulations to Alex, Sean, and Zach on passing their candidacy exams, and to Hannah and Tobias on passing their preliminary exams!
April 2018
Alex Hill receives an honorary mention from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program.
March 2018
Congrats to Hannah on co-authoring a publication in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces on transparent aerogels for solar thermal energy conversion.
October 2017
Welcome to the group: Sean, Zach and Alex!
May 2017
Congratulations to Hannah and Tobias on passing the DCE!
December 2016
Research on solar thermal photovoltaics selected as one of “The Biggest Clean Energy Advances in 2016” and one of the “10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2017” (see “Hot Solar Cells”) by the MIT Tech Review.
November 2016
Recent publication in Applied Physics Letters describes how to optimally split the solar spectrum between a heat engine and a solar cell.
October 2016
Welcome to the group, Hannah and Tobias!
September 2016
Welcome to the group, Yulei!
May 2016
Recent publication in Nature Energy demonstrates improvements in solar conversion efficiency using a thermal spectral converter.