See our new website: https://feng.mech.utah.edu 



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Mission statement

​Energy transport, conversion, and storage are the key issues in many emerging applications such as the thermal management of electronic devices, thermal protections in hypersonic vehicles, thermoelectric energy harvesting, energy management of buildings, lithium-ion batteries, and nuclear energy uses. Often these applications have been pushing extreme performance of materials to an unprecedented level beyond traditional limits. The goal of our lab is to push the boundary of energy transport beyond traditional limits by developing more effective and accurate predictive simulation methods to understand, predict and manipulate the energy transport processes in complex systems under extreme conditions. My laboratory is built on the basis of multi-scale simulations, data sciences, and experiments to solve the long-standing problems including, but are not limited to,
  • Ultra-high temperature thermal transport
  • Building energy efficiency
  • Thermal barrier coating
  • Thermal management of electronics
  • Batteries
  • Thermoelectric energy harvesting
  • Nuclear materials
  • Radiative heat transfer
Research methods:

Theoretical:
  • Density functional theory (DFT) packages: (phase stability, phase transition/ transformation, mechanical/ electrical/ thermodynamical/ thermal/ thermoelectical properties, atomic vibration, ion migration, ab-initio molecular dynamics (AIMD)) -- VASP, Abinit, ELK, Quantum Espresso
  • Classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, e.g., LAMMPS
  • Tight-binding molecular dynamics (TBMD) -- DFTB
  • Harmonic lattice dynamics (LD) calculations, e.g., (my own code, GULP, Phonopy)
  • Phonon normal mode analysis (NMA), i.e., spectral energy density (SED) analysis (my own code & my tool)
  • First principles calculations of three- and four-phonon scattering rates (my own developed method & code, Thirdorder, ShengBTE)
  • Spectral phonon temperature (SPT) method (my own developed method & code)
  • Exact solution to linearized Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) including three- and four-phonon scattering (my own developed method & code)
  • Finite difference and finite volume methods (FDM, FVM) in heat, mass, and momentum transfer (my own code)
  • Gray BTE -- FVM solver (code from Prof. Jayathi Murthy)
  • Finite element method, COMSOL
Experimental
  • SPS
  • Laser Flash
  • FTIR
  • Electron microscopy
Materials:

​Ultra-high thermal conductivity materials
  • Diamond, BAs, SiC, etc.
​Semiconductors
  • C, Si, Ge, BN, BP, BAs, AlN, AlP, AlAs, AlSb, GaN, GaP, GaAs, CdTe, etc.
  • impurity, defects, alloy, nanostructures (nanowires, nanomeshes, superlattices, etc.)
Ultra-high temperature materials
  • HfB2, ZrB2, HfC, ZrC, HfN, ZrN, etc.
Thermoelectric materials & nanostructures
  • SnSe, GeTe, SnS, PbS, PbTe, Bi2Te3, Sb2Te3, Bi2Se3, Bi2S3, etc.
  • PbTe-Bi2Te3, PbTe-Bi2-xSbxTe3, Bi2Te3-xSex, Bi13S18I2 heterostructures & nanocomposites
  • Cage-structure materials: skutterudites, clathrates
Emerging 1D/2D layered materials
  • III, IV, V groups: Graphene, boron nitride, carbon nanotube (CNT), black phosphorus, phosphorene, silicene, germanene, borophene, etc.
  • Transition-metal chalcogenide (MoS2, MoSe2, VS2, VSe2, WS2, WSe2, PdSe2, ZrTe5, etc.)
  • Their nanostructures: graphene nanomesh & nanoribbon, graphene/substrate & sandwich, graphene/BN superlattice & heterostructure, etc.
Complex oxides, thin films, surfaces, heterostructures
  • Thermal, electrical: LaCoO3, LaxSr1-xCoO3-d, etc. Magnetic, electrical: SrTiO3, LaxSr1-xMnO3, etc.
  • Rutile: RuO2, CrO2, PdO2, ReO2, RhO2, OSO2, IrO2, etc.
Lithium ion related
  • Batteries: LiCoO2, LiFePO4, Li10GeP2S12, LiNiO2, MgV2O5, CaV2O5, etc.
  • LiNbO2 Memristors
Molecules, amorphous, organic materials
  • polymers (polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene, EVOH, etc.), SiO2