The workshop will provide a critical review of the current state of the art in nanoscale transport and provide directions for future activities. A broad range of application areas are targeted including thermoelectric, optoelectronic, photovoltaic and nano/micro fluidic systems.
Intellectual Merit: The proposed workshop will examine the fundamentals of nanoscale transport including phonon, electron and photon interactions and examine how this understanding can be used to improve a wide array of nanoscale devices. The workshop will attract a number of key researchers in this field, including some who have not been active participants in this series of workshops. The PIs will provide a summative assessemnt of the state of the art, progress and challenges and future research directions that will be submitted for consideration for a journal publication and NSF report. The PIs are encouraged to look beyond simplistic modeling at the MD level in idealized geometries and consider how the advances made in the nanoscience field in the last two decades can now begin to be applied to nanodevices with increasing complexity and functionality.
Broader Impacts: The workshop will bring together a diverse group of people in an international setting and will therefore foster broad dissemination of the ongoing work and active interchange of ideas. The requested support is significantly biased toward supporting junior faculty.
Under the joint supports of U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the seventh U.S.-Japan Joint Seminar on Nanoscale Transport Phenomena was held in Shima, Japan on December 11-14, 2011. The goals of this joint seminar were to provide a critical assessment of the state of the art and future directions in the field of nanoscale transport phenomena and energy conversion processes, to foster U.S.-Japan collaborations, and to provide international exposure to a new generation of scientists in this field. Issues discussed in the joint seminar were organized in ten topical sessions, including (1) Nanoscale Thermophysical Measurements; (2) Optical Characterization; (3) Thermal and Molecular Transport; (4) Phonon Transport Modeling; (5) Energy Storage and Conversion; (6) Nanoscale Fluidics and Phase Change Phenomena; (7) Biological and Organic Systems; (8) Interfacial Thermal Transport; (9) Novel Thermoelectric and Thermal Management Materials; and (10) Nanocarbon Materials and Devices. Besides these topical sessions, the joint seminar also featured an opening plenary and a closing plenary session as well as an expert panel, where leading experts provided critical assessment of the past progress and addressed future directions of the field. In addition, an evening poster session provided opportunities for graduate and post-doc students to present their latest research results. A central theme throughout the meeting is an emphasis of the connection between societal needs, engineering systems developments, and fundamental scientific research. About thirty-five researchers from Japan and thirty-one researchers from the U.S. participated in the meeting. Summaries of different sessions of the seminar were prepared by the session and conference chairs, and collected into a report to be published in a journal. In addition, several participants of the joint seminar discuss the major findings of the seminar in a decadal review of the field of nanoscale thermal transport. Because nanoscale thermal transport phenomena are closely relevant to a number of disciplines including nanoelectronics, energy transport and conversion, biomedical science and technologies, and advanced manufacturing, these publications from the seminar are expected to make broad impacts to a number of disciplines. Moreover, both junior and senior researchers from diverse backgrounds have been supported to participate in the joint seminar. In particular, this joint seminar is a highly valuable international collaboration and educational opportunity for the graduate students, post-doc fellows, and assistant professors who participated in the joint seminar. The seminar has also led to subsequent short-term research visits of other U.S. graduate students to Japan. These efforts are expected to make contributions to the education and diversity of the next-generation science and technology workforce.
