Harvard University’s Materials for Energy Group presents
"Energy and Environment Nanomaterials"
Yi Cui
Associate Professor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Stanford University
TODAY at 12:00 pm
Maxwell Dworkin, G115
33 Oxford Street,Cambridge
Abstract:
Both energy and environment problems require technologies to be high performance and low cost. The capability of controlling nanomaterials in size, shape, assembly and property developed in the past decades has enabled exciting opportunities of designing nanomaterials rationally toward novel energy and environment technologies. In this lecture, I will show how we design and synthesize nanowires, nanotubes and nanocones to manipulate fundamental processes involving photons, electrons and ions. I will illustrate our success using exciting examples in solar cells, batteries, microbial fuel cells and water filters.
About Yi Cui:
Yi Cui went to University of Science and Technology of China, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1998. He attended graduate school from 1998 to 2002 at Harvard University, where he worked under supervision of Professor Charles M. Lieber. His Ph.D thesis concerned semiconductor nanowires for nanotechnology including synthesis, nanoelectroncis and nanosensor applications. He went on to work as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Paul Alivisatos at University of California, Berkeley. His postdoctoral work was mainly on electronics and assembly using colloidal nanocrystals. He is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.
The overall theme of his research has been on the rational design of nanoscale materials to address critical problems in energy and the environment. His research group has generated a number of breakthroughs. His group has developed silicon nanowire battery anodes with 10 times higher specific capacities than the existing carbon anodes. They have invented paper and textile batteries, opening up exciting opportunities in large-scale stationary energy storage and wearable power. His group has designed high performance nanodome solar cells and metal nanowire mesh transparent electrodes. They have generated novel electrified nanowire water filters for fast and low-cost pathogen disinfection, which was designated one of “the top 10 world changing ideas” by Scientific American. Most recently his group has invented mixing entropy batteries which could extract a large amount of electricity out of the salinity difference between the sea and the river water. In addition, Yi has also been actively working on topological insulators and nanoscale tools for biology.
Yi has received Harvard’s Wilson Prize (2011), KAUST Investigator Award (2008), ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), MDV Innovators Award (2007), Terman Fellowship (2005), the Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004), Miller Research Fellowship (2003), Distinguished Graduate Student Award in Nanotechnology (Foresight Institute, 2002), Gold Medal of Graduate Student Award (Material Research Society, 2001).
The Materials for Energy lecture series is sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Contact:
Brenda Hugot
Program Administrator
Harvard University Center for the Environment
24 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
bhugot@fas.harvard.edu
p. 617-496-1788
f. 617-496-0425
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