Nanostructures and Metamaterials for Advanced Thermal Management and Radiation Control

Sheng Shen is a Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He also holds courtesy appointments in both the Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Departments at CMU. He received his PhD degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department, MIT, in 2010. Prior to joining CMU in 2011, he conducted his postdoctoral research at UC-Berkeley. His research interests include nanoscale heat transfer and energy conversion, nanophotonics, and their applications in energy conversion, thermal management, sensing, and multifunctional materials. Professor Shen is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Director's Fellowship, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and Elsevier/JQSRT Raymond Viskanta Award for Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer. He also received the CMU Dean's Early Career Fellowship, the Philomathia Foundation Research Fellowship in Alternative Energy Research from UC-Berkeley, a Hewlett-Packard Best Paper Award from ASME Heat Transfer Division, and a Best Paper Award in Julius Springer Forum on Applied Physics.

Abstract:In this talk, I will present three examples of using engineered nanostructures and metamaterials for advanced thermal management and thermal radiation control. First, I will introduce a new class of nanostructured thermal interface materials that combine ultralow thermal resistance with high mechanical compliance. With improved thermal performance and reliability, these materials offer a promising solution for cooling high-power electronics, including CPUs and GPUs, with particular relevance to AI computing and data centers. Second, I will present our experimental demonstration of metamaterial-enhanced near-field radiative heat transfer using a custom-built nanodevice platform. Metamaterials consist of subwavelength resonators, or “meta-atoms,” that can be engineered to control electromagnetic modes and thermal radiation. Although metamaterials have been theoretically proposed as a powerful approach for controlling and enhancing near-field radiative heat transfer, experimental demonstrations have remained challenging. Finally, I will discuss pixelated and reconfigurable control of mid-infrared thermal emission using bio-inspired brochosome structures and electrically programmable metasurfaces. These approaches enable dynamic control of thermal radiation and provide new opportunities for adaptive and intelligent thermal photonic systems.