Utah Nanoscale Thermal Transport (NT2) Lab
The Utah Nano-Energy group focuses on research and education of nanoscale energy transport and conversion processes.

My PhD study aims to address the current challenges in the experimental measurement of near-field thermal radiation and to further investigate its application for energy conversion. To this end, I propose to develop a versatile experimental setup for fundamental understanding and measurement of near-field thermal radiation that also includes the process of design and fabrication of proper samples. Using this setup, direct and systematic measurement of near-field thermal radiation between macroscale planar structures for broad nanoscale gap distances under a large thermal gradient over 100 K is achievable. . . Moreover, I will also study the feasibility of utilizing near-field thermal radiation to improve the conversion efficiency of current energy conversion schemes. In particular, I propose an alternative way of exploiting near-field thermal radiation for renewable energy harvesting that can be called near-field enhanced thermionic energy conversion (NETEC), to generate electricity directly from moderate to high temperature heat sources (i.e., 800 K<T<1600 K).

The proposed research aims to provide a complete understanding of extreme near-field thermal radiation by combining the sub-nm z -axis resolution of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) with optical detection of tip-scattering and thermal sensitivity of nanoheater/thermometer (NH/T) devices. Furthermore, to fundamentally understand how near-field radiation exchanges between the tip and underlying substrate, a closed-form model based on the finite dipole model is developed, which can be readily compared with experiments. This researchwill give novel insight to (1) the limit of fluctuational electrodynamics, (2) the sub-10 nm gap dependence of total and spectral near-field thermal radiation, (3) the transition from pure radiation to phonon conduction.