“Remarkable heat conduction mediated by non-equilibrium phonon polaritons” published in Nature, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Zhiliang Pan is a 2023 Ph.D graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the direction of Dr. Deyu Li. He stays in the same lab as a postdoctoral scholar after graduation to further expand his Ph.D research on energy transport mediated by phonon polaritons in polar nanostructures. In this recent publication co-authored with fellow Ph.D graduate Guanyu Lu from Dr. Josh Caldwell’s group, they report on the unexpected significant contribution of phonon polaritons to heat conduction in SiC nanowires. Through thermally stimulating non-equilibrium phonon polaritons with much higher number densities, they obtained a maximum polariton thermal conductivity of 5.8 W/m-K, far beyond the Landauer limit predicted based on the equilibrium Bose–Einstein distributions. The paper provides a new approach to modulate the energy transport in polar nanostructures, which provides a new heat dissipation channel that can effectively offset the classical size effect and improve the thermal design of micro/nano electronic devices.