Engineering Phonon Transport

Problem Description

We're interested in lowering the thermal conductivity by building specialized phonon mirrors. This would allow us to make better thermoelectric materials that convert a larger fraction of the heat flux you push through them into electrical power.

Approach

Our approach is to take the knowledge we've gained working on specialized multilayer optical structures for OLED outcoupling, PV incoupling, thermophotovoltaics and solar thermal collectors, and turn it into a tool that can be used to build the best possible phonon mirrors. The best structures we've designed are predicted to lower the thermal conductivity by approximately a factor of 3 compared to superlattices.

Project Info

• People: Mukul Agrawal and Peter Peumans

Resources

• Gang Chen's group at MIT
  
• Rajeev Ram's group at MIT
  
• Arun Majumdar's group at UC Berkeley
  
• Jim Heath's group at CalTech
  
• Ali Shakouri's group at UC Santa Cruz
  
• Chris Dames' group at UC Riverside