Abstract
Rapid progress in synthesis and processing of nanomaterials has created a pressing demand for greater scientific understanding of thermal transport at the nanoscale. Employing the related interweaving surface/interface and confinement phenomena, two key research paradigms of importance to energy conversion and transport will be discussed in this talk. On one hand, owing to miniaturization and nanostructuring, heat conduction can be significantly hindered in a controlled manner so that materials with very low thermal conductivity can be nanofabricated, which can be beneficial for energy conversion applications, e.g. in high efficiency thermoelectrics. On the other hand, interfacial thermal transport can be improved by phonon manipulation such that low interfacial thermal resistance can be realized in electronics to enhance heat dissipation in thermal management. Based on the above, I will present in this seminar results of my research in: a) Thermal transport of thermoelectric nanowires (energy conversion): I will propose two novel concepts of nanowire nanostructuring to significantly enhance their ZT coefficient. b) Interfacial heat transfer in electronics (thermal management): In this part, I will describe methods to reduce interfacial thermal resistance by interface nanoengineering and by taking advantage of nanoconfinement effect. Taken together, these results exemplify opportunities and challenges of nanoengineering in nanoscale thermal transport and provide a new perspective to innovative energy conversion and advanced thermal management.

Biographical Sketch
Ming Hu received the B.S. degree in mechanics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2001 and the doctoral degree in solid mechanics from Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006. After several years of research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, he joined RWTH Aachen University as a Junior Professor in spring, 2013. Dr. Hu’s current research is primarily focused on atomistic simulations of micro/nanoscale heat transfer with application in energy conversion (thermoelectrics) and thermal management (electronic cooling).