Xianming Dai
University of Texas at Dallas
Seminar Information
In this seminar, I will present innovative bioinspired materials for decarbonization and thermal packaging. (1) Decarbonization in Industrial Heating. The U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Heat Shot™ aims to achieve at least 85% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from energy-intensive heating processes by 2035. To contribute to this goal, I will discuss the replacement of fossil fuel-powered boilers with green electricity-powered heat pumps for electrification and decarbonization. Our approach is to design and manufacture bioinspired surfaces to recover latent heat from exhaust vapor and tailor an anti-icing surface for coldclimate heat pumps. (2) Thermal Packaging for Electronic and Power Systems. The U.S. is making significant efforts to advance semiconductor manufacturing, innovation, and research, largely supported by the federal CHIPS Act. This development provides significant opportunities for packaging and integration, especially in emerging defense electronics, spacecraft power systems, data centers, electric vehicles, and smartphones, where thermal management is crucial to combat overheating and improve energy efficiency. I will present an ultrafast thermal switch using acoustic actuation for dynamic thermal management and embedded evaporative cooling in 3D microsystems, addressing thermal challenges for future electronic and power systems.
Dr. Xianming (Simon) Dai is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is the recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2023, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2021, and an Army Research Office Young Investigator Award in 2019. He received the Outstanding Early Career Award at the 2021 micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference for outstanding and significant contributions to the fields of surface wettability, phase-change heat transfer, and water harvesting. His students won the DoE Fellowship for Building Energy, and the ASME Best Poster Award. Prior to UT Dallas, Dr. Dai was a postdoc at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of South Carolina, and his M.S. and B.S. degrees at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Chongqing University. His research interest includes bioinspired thermal fluids for decarbonization, thermal packaging, and health innovations.