ME PhD Student Wins "Best Student Poster Award" at the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting
Yingying Zhang, a PhD student working with ME Associate Professor Xiaojia Wang, won a competitive student poster award at the Materials Research Society (MRS) fall 2021 meeting in Boston.
Zhang won the Best Student Poster Award for "Symposium EN03: Thermal Materials, Modeling and Technoeconomic Impacts for Thermal Management and Energy Application." Her poster, “Thickness-Dependent Thermal Conductivity of Mechanically Exfoliated β˗Ga2O3Thin Films,” is based on a collaborative effort between two research groups, led by Steven Koester in ECE and Wang. This collaboration focuses on the thermal properties of beta-phase gallium oxide (β˗Ga2O3) bulk crystals and high-quality monocrystalline β˗Ga2O3 thin films prepared by mechanical exfoliation. Zhang led the thermal measurements and analysis using an ultrafast laser-based metrology. Results of this work pave the way for advancing the design of future thermally aware β˗Ga2O3˗based high-power and high-voltage electronic devices.
Zhang's work focuses on probing thermal properties of micro/nanostructured materials enabled by time-domain thermoreflectance, as part of the Micro/Nanoscale Thermal Transport Laboratory group.
This work is supported by NSF MRSEC, MN Futures Award, and MNC.