Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Trustees of Boston College

University of Houston System

Other

Leland Stanford Junior University

Mentor Graphics Corporation

Gmz Energy, Inc.

Gang Paul Chen

Zhifeng Ren

Mildred S Dresselhaus

Svetlana Boriskina

Lee A Weinstein

Evelyn N Wang

Sungwoo Yang

Thomas Alan Cooper

Qing Jie

Daniel Kraemer

Bed Poudel

Xiaoyuan Chen

Hadi Ghasemi

Lin Zhao

Bikramjit S Bhatia

Elise M Strobach

Xiaopeng Huang

James Loomis

David M Bierman

Shankar Kumar

Shuo Chen

Anurag Bajpayee

Xiao Yan

George Ni

Kenneth McEnaney

Janusz Rajski

John H Lienhard

Yanjia Zuo

Manish Sharma

Xuanhe Zhao

Nagesh Tamarapalli

Huaxing Tang

Martin Keim

Andrej Lenert

Shaoting Lin

Borivoje B Mikic

Bo Yu

Bolin Liao

Jonathan Kien-Kwok Tong

Qing Hao

Yanfei Xu

Andrew Jerome Muto

Wenzhong Wang

Qian Zhang

Taofang Zeng

Feng Cao

Marin Soljacic

Yi Cui

Anthony Stephen Kewitsch

George A Rakuljic

Li Shi

Victor Leyva

Ivan Celanovic

Yuan Yang

Xi Chen

Laureen Meroueh

Nenad Miljkovic

Amy Marie Marconnet

Sean Sullivan

Dezhi Wang

Walker Chan

James Christopher Caylor

Tianyi Sun

Qinyong Zhang

Jonathan K Tong

Yucheng Lan

Juergen Koehler

Young Suk Nam

Avishay Eyal

Giri Joshi

Branimir I Sikic

Jian Yang

Erik Skow

Jianjian Wang

Mona Zebarjadi

Keivan Esfarjani

Wei-Chun Hsu

Brian Burg

Qinyu He

Yi Ma

Xiaowei Wang

Joshi R Giri

Hsien-Ping Feng

Yu Bo

Christine Susanne Junior

Ruiting Zheng

Jinwei Gao

Hohyun Lee

Arvind Narayanaswamy

Thomas Cooper

Selcuk Yerci

Seyed Hadi Zandavi

Fei Tian

Bai Song

Seok Woo Lee

Stephan Josef Peter Kress

Kevin Kleinguetl

Michael Fowler

Wei-Shu Liu

Hengzhi Wang

A method for growing bulk boron arsenide (BA) crystals, the method comprising utilizing a seeded chemical vapor transport (CVT) growth mechanism to produce single BAs crystals which are used for further CVT growth, wherein a sparsity of nucleation centers is controlled during the further CVT growth. Also disclosed are bulk BAs crystals produced via the method.

Unusual high thermal conductivity in boron arsenide bulk crystals

A silica aerogel having a mean pore size less than 5 nm with a standard deviation of 3 nm. The silica aerogel may have greater than 95% solar-weighted transmittance at a thickness of 8 mm for wavelengths in the range of 250 nm to 2500 nm, and a 400° C. black-body weighted specific extinction coefficient of greater than 8 m/kg for wavelengths of 1.5 μm to 15 μm. Silica aerogel synthesis methods are described. A solar thermal aerogel receiver (STAR) may include an opaque frame defining an opening, an aerogel layer disposed in the opaque frame, with at least a portion of the aerogel layer being proximate the opening, and a heat transfer fluid pipe in thermal contact with and proximate the aerogel layer. A concentrating solar energy system may include a STAR and at least one reflector to direct sunlight to an opening in the STAR.

Solar thermal aerogel receiver and materials therefor

Described herein are window retrofits including a monolithic silica aerogel slab having (i) an average haze value of &#x3c;5% as calculated in accordance with ASTM standard D1003-13 and (ii) a U-factor of &#x3c;0.5 BTU/sf/hr/&#xb0; F., and a transparent polymer envelope sealed at an internal pressure of &#x2264;1 atmosphere, wherein the monolithic silica aerogel slab is encapsulated in the transparent polymer envelope. The monolithic aerogel slab can have a transmittance &#x3e;94% at 8 mm thickness. The window retrofit can be bonded to a glass sheet.

Energy efficient soundproofing window retrofits

A solar vapor generator includes an absorber to absorb sunlight and an emitter, in thermal communication with the absorber, to radiatively evaporate a liquid under less than 1 sun illumination and without pressurization. The emitter is physically separated from the liquid, substantially reducing fouling of the emitter. The absorber and the emitter may also be heated to temperatures higher than the boiling point of the liquid and may thus may be used to further superheat the vapor. Solar vapor generation can provide the basis for many sustainable desalination, sanitization, and process heating technologies.

Methods, apparatus and systems for generating and superheating vapor under sunlight

A silica aerogel having a mean pore size less than 5 nm with a standard deviation of 3 nm. The silica aerogel may have greater than 95% solar-weighted transmittance at a thickness of 8 mm for wavelengths in the range of 250 nm to 2500 nm, and a 400&#xb0; C. black-body weighted specific extinction coefficient of greater than 8 m/kg for wavelengths of 1.5 &#x3bc;m to 15 &#x3bc;m. Silica aerogel synthesis methods are described. A solar thermal aerogel receiver (STAR) may include an opaque frame defining an opening, an aerogel layer disposed in the opaque frame, with at least a portion of the aerogel layer being proximate the opening, and a heat transfer fluid pipe in thermal contact with and proximate the aerogel layer. A concentrating solar energy system may include a STAR and at least one reflector to direct sunlight to an opening in the STAR.

System for storage of electricity in the form of thermal energy, and release of thermal energy during times of demand. The system includes a unit for containing at least one electrically conducting phase change material and electrical circuitry for driving electrical current through the phase change material to heat the phase change material into a molten state, or at least one electrical heater used to convert electricity into heat stored in the phase change material. Structure is provided for transferring heat in the phase change material to a working fluid such as steam or gas for electricity generation in a steam turbine or gas turbine, capable of generating supercritical fluids. Structure is also provided for transferring heat in the phase change material to a thermal energy to electrical energy conversion device. A suitable phase change material is elemental silicon or an aluminum-silicon alloy.

System for direct electrical charging and storage of thermal energy for power plants

Disclosed are methods for the manufacture of n-type and p-type filled skutterudite thermoelectric legs of an electrical contact. A first material of CoSiand a dopant are ball-milled to form a first powder which is thermo-mechanically processed with a second powder of n-type skutterudite to form a n-type skutterudite layer disposed between a first layer and a third layer of the doped-CoSi. In addition, a plurality of components such as iron, and nickel, and at least one of cobalt or chromium are ball-milled form a first powder that is thermo-mechanically processed with a p-type skutterudite layer to form a p-type skutterudite layer 'second layer' disposed between a first and a third layer of the first powder. The specific contact resistance between the first layer and the skutterudite layer for both the n-type and the p-type skutterudites subsequent to hot-pressing is less than about 10.0 &#x3bc;&#x3a9;&#xb7;cm.

Fabrication of stable electrode/diffusion barrier layers for thermoelectric filled skutterudite devices

Systems and methods disclosed herein are directed towards the fabrication of a solar absorber comprising an IR reflector layer deposited on a substrate; a first cermet layer deposited in contact with the IR reflector layer; a second cermet layer deposited in contact with the first cermet layer; a first anti-reflection coating layer deposited in contact with the second cermet layer; a second anti-reflection coating layer deposited in contact with the first anti-reflection coating layer. A sputtering process may be used to deposit some or all of the layers, and the YSZ layers in each cermet layer may be deposited with a tuned partial oxygen pressure in order to form a layer that is oxygen-deficient.

Selective solar absorbers with tuned oxygen deficiency and methods of fabrication thereof

Process for continuous fabrication of highly aligned polymer films. A polymer-solvent solution is subjected to a high shear, high temperature, Couette flow to extrude a thin film having polymer chain disentanglement. The extruded thin film is frozen and the solvent is allowed to evaporate to form a dried film. The dried film is mechanically drawn using a constant force, adaptive-thickness drawing system to align polymer molecular chains through plastic deformation. A suitable polymer is ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene.

Continuous fabrication system and method for highly aligned polymer films

A method of manufacturing a thermoelectric material comprising: ball-milling a compound comprising a plurality of components, the first component M comprising at least one of a rare earth metal, an actinide, an alkaline-earth metal, and an alkali metal, the second component T comprising a metal of subgroup VIII, and the third component X comprises a pnictogen atom. The compound may be ball-milled for up to 5 hours, and then thermo-mechanically processed by, for example, hot pressing the compound for less than two hours. Subsequent to the thermo-mechanical processing, the compound comprises a single filled skutterudite phase with a dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) above 1.0 and the compound has a composition following a formula of MTX.

Formation of P-type filled skutterudite by ball-milling and thermo-mechanical processing

A localized heating structure includes a spectrally-selective solar absorber, that absorbs incident solar radiation and reflects at wavelengths longer than 2 &#x3bc;m, with an underlying heat-spreading layer having a thermal conductivity equal to or greater than 50 W/(mK), a thermally insulating layer, adjacent to the spectrally-selective solar absorber, having a thermal conductivity of less than 0.1 W/(mK), one or more evaporation openings through the spectrally-selective solar absorber and the thermally insulating layer, and an evaporation wick, disposed in one or more of the evaporation openings in the thermally insulating layer, that contacts liquid and allows the liquid to be transported from a location beneath the thermally insulating layer through to the spectrally-selective solar absorber in order to generate vapor from the liquid. The thermally insulating layer is configured to have a density less than the liquid so that the localized heating structure is able to float on the liquid.

Localized solar collectors

A single-stack, solar power receiver comprising both a thermal absorber layer and a photovoltaic cell layer. The stack includes an aerogel layer, that is optically transparent and thermally insulating ('OTTI'); a spectrally selective high thermal conductivity ('SSTC') thermal absorber layer; a bottom OTTI layer; and a PV cell layer. The SSTC layer includes a set of fins that substantially blocks solar radiation absorption in the band where PV cells are most sensitive. Photons with energies above or below this band block range are absorbed by the fins and the absorbed heat is conducted to pipes in the fin structure carrying a heated thermal working fluid to heat storage. Photons with energy in the band block range are reflected by the SSTC fins to the PV cell layer. The bottom OTTI aerogel layer keeps the PV cell operating near ambient temperature. The PV cell converts incident solar radiation to electrical energy.

Internally-heated thermal and externally-cool photovoltaic cascade solar energy system for full solar spectrum utilization

Formation of p-type filled skutterudite by ball-milling and thermo-mechanical processing

Infrared-transparent visible-opaque fabrics for wearable personal thermal management.

Infrared transparent visible opaque fabrics

Growing community of inventors

Monterey Park, CA, United States of America

Gang Paul Chen