Heat Energy Leaps Through Empty Space, Thanks to Quantum Weirdness

If you use a vacuum-insulated thermos to help keep your coffee hot, you may know it’s a good insulator because heat energy has a hard time moving through empty space. Vibrations of atoms or molecules, which carry thermal energy, simply can’t travel if there are no atoms or molecules around. But a new study by…

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Going to extremes

New research by Berkeley engineers may soon make it more practical to use battery-powered vehicles and devices in extreme temperatures, such as icy-cold winters in Minnesota or stifling-hot summers in Death Valley. Led by Chris Dames, professor of mechanical engineering, the researchers developed a thermal regulator that can improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries outside of what’s…

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ME Professor Carlos Fernandez-Pello Awarded the Howard W. Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship by the IAFSS

ME Professor Carlos Fernandez-Pello has been awarded the Howard W. Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship by the International Association of Fire Safety Science IAFSS. As part of the award, Professor Fernandez-Pello gave the Plenary Lecture at the IAFSS’s 12th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science on current fire science interest. His paper, “Wildland Fire Spot Ignition…

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ME Professor Costas Grigoropoulos’ Laser Thermal Lab Featured in Latest Issue of Advanced Materials

Researchers in the Laser Thermal Laboratory have developed a new method for the stable doping of atomically layered transition-metal dichalchogenide materials TMDCs. TMDCs play a crucial role in next generation opto- electronic devices enabling new functionalities to overcome limitations of current semiconductor devices. Doping is a central issue in the integration of these new materials…

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ME PhD Student Zi Jing Wong Wins Best Paper Award at SPIE Conference

ME Professor Xiang Zhang’s PhD student Zi Jing Wong, has won the Best Student Paper award at the 2015 SPIE Active Photonic Materials Conference. Wong’s award winning paper, “Single Mode Parity-Time Laser,” discusses: “The concept of parity-time PT symmetry exploits the interplay between the material loss and gain to attain novel optical phenomena such as…

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