MMAE Seminar - Dr. Heng Wang - Rational Exploration and Engineering of Thermoelectric Materials Using Thermoelectric Quality Factor

-
John T. Rettaliata Engineering Center, Room 104, 10 West 32nd Street, Chicago, IL 60616
  1. Home
  2. Events
  3. MMAE Seminar - Dr. Heng Wang - Rational Exploration and Engineering of Thermoelectric Materials Using Thermoelectric Quality Factor

Armour College of Engineering's Mechanical, Materials & Aerospace Engineering Department will welcome Dr. Heng Wang, a postdoctoral research fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on Monday, February 6th, to present his lecture, Rational Exploration and Engineering of Thermoelectric Materials Using Thermoelectric Quality Factor.

Abstract

Thermoelectric conversion between heat and electricity has great potentials in applications such as solid state cooling and waste heat recovery. The availability of efficient (high zT) materials determines to what extent it could be used for various domestic applications. Exploring new materials and improving their performance is an optimization problem under multiple dimensions. In my talk, I will introduce an approach using the thermoelectric quality factor, to help better understand the transport behavior, reduce the amount of experiments needed in materials research, and explore materials more rationally. We will go from basics of thermoelectric transport, to simple cases of carrier density tuning, then to more complicated ones with varying compositions. I will end with an example of achieving state-of-the-art zT in PbSe through rational material design, and an outlook of further opportunities in thermoelectric research.

Biography

Heng Wang is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He did his PhD at California Institute of Technology, working with Jeff Snyder from 2008 to 2015. Before that he obtained his Bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University, China in 2005. And a joint Master's degree from Tsinghua and Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 2008. Heng has a long-time interest in thermoelectric materials research. He is the recipient of the Goldsmid Award 2014 from the International Thermoelectric Society, and a recipient of the Chinese government award for outstanding students studying abroad in 2012.