Title:

Phonon Management: Acoustics, Optomechanics, and Nanoscale Heat Transport

Speaker:

Prof. Martin Maldovan

Affiliation:

Materials Science & Engineering,Massachusetts Institute of Technology

When:

Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Montgomery Knight Building, Room 244

Host:

Julian Rimoli
rimoli@gatech.edu
404-894-8386

Abstract

Discovering and controlling new material properties in increasingly smaller, complex, and diverse structures is a major challenge for scientists and engineers. During the last decade, the management of acoustic phonons has been transformed by the design and fabrication of phononic crystals, which are materials designed to control the propagation of mechanical waves. Recently, it has also been shown that hypersonic phonons can interact with photons in optomechanical crystals, which are periodic materials that can enhance the interaction between sound and light. More recently, understanding and controlling nanoscale heat transport has become critical for the development of novel and efficient materials for different technologies such as energy materials, nano and optoelectronic devices, thermal barriers, and biochemical materials. In this talk, we review our past and current work on these areas, with an emphasis on understanding the transport of thermal energy in nanostructures. We predict the thermal conductivity of several different nanostructures such as thin films, nanowires, polycrystals, and superlattices from micro to nano scales. The rational design and fabrication of nanoscale thermal materials is essential for the development of the next generation of energy, electronic, thermal, and biochemical devices.

Biography

Martin Maldovan is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Maldovan has authored numerous scientific publications in the field of photonics, phononics, and mechanics and received the 2006 Scientific Writing Award to Professionals in Acoustic from the Acoustical Society of America. His research interests include the prediction of material properties and rational design of materials by computational simulations, wave-matter interactions, merging the fields of photonics and phononics, and understanding and controlling nanoscale heat transport for the development of novel thermal materials.

Notes

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