Abstract
Thermoelectrics have emerged as a new frontier of materials research for energy conversion applications.  Physics associated with semiconductor charge carrier and phonon transport is of particular interest.  Most of the past studies have been focused on majority carriers and lattice phonons in heavily doped semiconductors.  In this talk I will show that minority carriers, however, could have a significant impact on both electrical and thermal transport, especially at elevated temperatures.  I will also describe means of improving thermoelectric performance of heavily doped semiconductors via band structure modulation and preferential minority carrier scatterings.  These results offer insights for understanding experimental findings and for optimizing thermoelectric properties of narrow band-gap semiconductors.

Short Bio:
Jihui Yang is currently the Kyocera Associate Professor at Materials Science and Engineering Department of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.  Prior to joining the University of Washington in the Fall of 2011, he was a Technical Fellow and Lab Group Manager at GM Research and Development Center, responsible for leading GM’s research on Li-ion battery materials and systems; as well as advanced thermoelectric materials and technology development. 
Jihui received his PhD degree in physics from the University of Michigan in 2000.  He is the recipient of the Kent M. Terwilliger Prize for best doctoral thesis from the University of Michigan Physics Department in 2001, the John M. Campbell Award (outstanding contributions to pure or applied science) from GM R&D Center in 2007, and the US Department of Energy Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) award in 2008.  Jihui was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012.
Jihui served as the President of the International Thermoelectric Society between 2011 and 2014.He is the editor of Journal of Electronic Materials.