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"TOP University is Coming" Editor Press
"TOP University is Coming" On December 11, Professor Zhang Xiang, President of the Nanoscience Center of the University of California, Berkeley/Hong Kong, and his team published an article titled "Phonon heat transfer across a vacuum through quantum fluctuations" in the top international journal Nature. This study subverts the knowledge we learned about heat transfer in high school physics. Zhang Xiang's team demonstrated through experiments the heat transfer caused by quantum fluctuations and between two objects separated by real space gaps, and also discovered unknown heat transfer mechanisms, convection and radiation. This study provides the possibility for the use of quantum vacuum in nanoscale energy transmission.
personal profile
Zhang Xiang, born in December 1963 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, is an optoelectronicist, Academician of the US National Academy of Engineering, , Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Ernest S. Kuh Chaired, Director of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and President of the University of Hong Kong .
Zhang Xiang's research mainly focuses on nanoscience and technology, material physics , photonics and biotechnology. In 1985, Zhang Xiang obtained a bachelor's degree from the School of Physics of Nanjing University; in 1988, he obtained a master's degree from the School of Physics of Nanjing University; in 1996, he received a doctorate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley; in 1996, he served as an assistant professor at the Penn State University; in 1999, he received an associate professor and full-time professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; in 2004, he joined the University of California, Berkeley as a full-time professor; in 2008, he was listed as one of the top ten scientific discoveries in the world by Time magazine; in 2010, he was elected as an academician of the National Academy of Engineering; in 2012, he was hired as an advisor to the president of Nanjing University; in 2015, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was appointed as the 16th president of the University of Hong Kong on December 15, 2017, with a term of five years.
TOP Scientific Research Brief
"TOP University is Coming" The editor said that the study shows that due to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called Casimir interaction, thermal energy can span a vacuum of hundreds of nanometers. This is an unprecedented way of heat transfer, and it also indicates that sound may also spread in a vacuum.
research team created two ultra-thin gold-plated silicon nitride films in a completely dust-free vacuum chamber and placed them at a distance of hundreds of nanometers apart. The author of achieves strong phonon coupling through vacuum fluctuations based on nanomechanical systems and observes the thermal energy exchange between each phonon mode.
On the premise of eliminating the influence of other possible heat transfer methods, the researchers found that even if there is no connection between the hundreds of nanometers in the middle of the two membranes, there is no air, when one of the membranes is heated, the temperature of the other membrane also rises.
This phenomenon is enough to prove that thermal energy can transfer at least hundreds of nanometers in a vacuum, subverting the classic heat transfer theory. This discovery reveals that the unique quantum effect will open a new door to quantum thermodynamics and bring practical significance to the thermal management of nanotechnology. Although this work still has limitations on heat transfer distance, it has opened up a new path for the cooling of nanoscale electronic components, especially electronic products such as chips, mobile phones and computers, to achieve smaller and lighter heat.
Review and editing: Dake
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