Micro/nanostructured materials offer significantly new opportunities for high-efficiency devices and systems for energy harvesting, conversion and storage. There is, however, a tremendous gap between the proof-of-principle demonstrations at the small scale and the intrinsically large-scale real-world energy systems and sustainable applications. In this talk, Professor Yin will give an overview of our research and, more specifically, present our recent development on how structured photonic materials address the challenge of the tremendous power hungry for space cooling and promote photosynthesis and crop yield in greenhouses.
Professor Xiaobo Yin received his PhD from Stanford University in 2008 and is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. He is a fellow of OSA and SPIE. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong, he was the Bruce S. Anderson Faculty Fellow of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on nanostructured optical materials, radiative heat transfer, high-temperature materials, and scalable manufacturing. He authored and co-authored more than 100 journal publications and is one of the most highly cited researchers by Clarivate Analytics. His works have been featured in numerous media outlets including Nature, Science, Physics Today, Scientific American, the Economists, and Forbes. He was a recipient of the 2015 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2017 Moore Inventor Fellowships, and the 2017 Kavli Foundation Early Career Lectureship of Materials Science. His work on passive radiative cooling was named one of the top 10 breakthroughs of the year 2017 by the Institute of Physics (IOP) Physics World and the top 10 most reviewed news by The Economists.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.
