Dr. Lei Tang is a postdoctoral scholar in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2023. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2017 and 2018, respectively. He has worked on a variety of projects, all with the common thread of fundamentals of thermal radiation and conduction in challenging regimes and their associated energy applications.
Research
The study of micro/nanoscale heat transfer is of significant fundamental and practical importance. First, the physical mechanisms of heat transfer at the micro/nanoscale can be very different and much more complicated than at the macroscale, which also provides much richer opportunities for engineering heat transport. In addition, micro/nanoscale heat transfer is relevant to diverse applications such as thermal management in nanoelectronics and energy conversion devices from photovoltaics to thermoelectrics. Tang’s research focuses on two main themes: near-field nanoscale thermal radiation and thermal conduction in thin films, which are important for various energy applications such as thermophotovoltaic devices, thermal radiative diodes, and high-power micro/nanoelectronics. Currently, he is working on nanothermometry by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to map temperature at an ultrafine spatial resolution down to 10 nm.
