As the most ubiquitous form of energy, thermal energy or
simply heat is widely involved in almost every aspect of real-world
applications. Better understanding and then “taming” the thermal transport
processes inside various materials and devices, especially at the nanoscale,
are critical to many fundamental and engineering problems. Tremendous researchopportunities are opened in this field, ranging from the large-scale recovery,storage, and conservation of heat, to improving the thermal safety and
reliability of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries and electronic devices.
Unrestricted to aeronautics and aerospace applications, many of these research
topics will significantly change our everyday lives as well.
The advancement of cutting-edge heat transfer research is
strongly dependent on the fundamental understanding of heat at the atomic
level. In a dielectric material, heat is carried by the vibrations of atoms ormolecules, which are essentially sound waves. At each vibrational frequency,
quantum mechanics principles dictate that the vibrational energy must be a
multiple of a basic amount of energy, called a quantum.
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