Thermal transport is a key issue limiting many important energy transfer and conversion applications such as heat dissipation in electronic devices and thermoelectric energy conversion. In this talk I will show how phonon thermal transport can be controlled using boundary, interface, and confinement effects in nanostructures, in order to significantly improve energy transport and conversion performance. Our work is enabled by multiscale multiphysics simulation techniques linking first principles calculations and molecular dynamics simulations. We have predicted thermal transport properties of a variety of graphene structures which are of significance for the next generation electronics, including suspended and supported graphene, graphene nanoribbons, and graphene-metal interfaces. For thermal transport in thermoelectric materials, we use ab initio calculations to develop empirical interatomic potentials for heavy metal compounds including Bi₂Te₃ and PbTe, and then perform classical molecular dynamics simulations to predict thermal conductivities of bulk, nanowires, and few-quintuple thin films. In particular, a spectral energy density approach has been used to determine mode-resolved phonon meanfree-path which provides very useful insights into thermal transport in nanostructures.

Dr. Xiulin Ruan received his BS and MS from Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2002 respectively. He also received his MS and Phd from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006 and 2007. He is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. his research interests include nanoscale heat transfer and energy conversion, multiscale multiphysics simulations of nanomaterials for energy applications, photovoltaic nanomaterials, thermoelectric nanomaterials, and nanoscale thermal radiation and nano-photonics.

Discovery Park, Purdue Unversity
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
Indo-US Science & Technology Forum
NSF - Office of International Science and Engineering
nanoHUB.org

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Xiulin Ruan (2015), "Symposium on Nanomaterials for Energy: Thermal Transport in Nanostructures: A Multiscale Multiphysics Approach," https://nanohub.org/resources/13989.

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