Wang Research Group

Dr. Wang received her Bachelor's degree in Safety Science and Engineering at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2005 and her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, Indiana, in 2011. After one-year's postdoctoral experience at Purdue University, she joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering in January 2013. Dr. Wang received the NSF Career Award in February 2014. Dr. Wang's research focuses on the study of ultrafast carrier dynamics and micro/nano-scale heat transfer in nanomaterials with optical spectroscopy. Her research addresses many fundamental problems encountered in a wide variety of disciplines: thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, gas fuel generation, quantum-cascade lasers, etc. Her group has set up several ultrafast time-resolved spectrometers at UT, which are capable of capturing the ultrafast phenomenon occurring from femtosecond (10-15 s) to picosecond (10-12 s) time scale.

Currently Dr. Wang's research interests include:

1. Ultrafast optical spectroscopy to detect and control phonon / electron dynamics in nanomaterials for applications in clean energy
2. Characterization of micro/nano-scale heat transfer in nanostructures
3. Theoretical and computational studies of atomic-level carrier transport with molecular dynamics simulations.

Most Recent Publications

1. X. Meng, Zhou, Y., Chen, K., Roberts, R. H., Wu, W., Lin, J. ‐F., Chen, R. T., Xu, X., and Wang, Y., “Anisotropic Saturable and Excited-State Absorption in Bulk ReS2,” Advanced Optical Materials, (2018)
2. K. Chen, Roy, A., Rai, A., Movva, H. C. P., Meng, X., He, F., Banerjee, S. K., and Wang, Y., “Accelerated carrier recombination by grain boundary/edge defects in MBE grown transition metal dichalcogenides,” APL Materials, vol. 6, pp. 056103, (2018).
3. K. Chen, Roy, A., Rai, A., Valsaraj, A, Meng, X., He, Feng, Xu. X, Register, L. F., Banerjee, S. K., and Wang, Y., "Carrier Trapping by Oxygen Impurities in Molybdenum Diselenide." ACS applied materials & interfaces, 10 (1), pp 1125–1131 (2018).
4. J. Jeong, Chen, K., Walker, E. S., Roy, N., He, F., Liu, P., Willson, C.G., Cullinan, M., Bank, S.R. & Wang, Y. , In-plane Thermal Conductivity Measurement with Nanosecond Grating Imaging Technique. Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 83-96, (2018).
5. K. Chen, Ghosh, R., Meng, X., Roy, A., Kim, J. - S., He, F., Mason, S. C., Xu, X., Lin, J. - F., Akinwande, D., Banerjee, S. K., and Wang, Y., “Experimental evidence of exciton capture by mid-gap defects in CVD grown monolayer MoSe2,” npj 2D Materials and Applications, vol. 1, pp. 1-15, (2017).
6. K. Chen, Sheehan, N., He, F., Meng, X., Mason, S. C., Bank, S. R., and Wang, Y., “Measurement of Ambipolar Diffusion Coefficient of Photoexcited Carriers with Ultrafast Reflective Grating-Imaging Technique,” ACS Photonics, 4 (6), pp 1440–1446 (2017).
7. W. Wu, Chai, Z., Gao, Y., Kong, D., He, F., Meng, X., and Wang, Y., “Carrier dynamics and optical nonlinearity of alloyed CdSeTe quantum dots in glass matrix,” Optical Materials Express, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 1547-1556 (2017).
8. F. He, W. Wu and Y. Wang, “Direct Measurement of Coherent Thermal Phonons in Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 superlattice.” Applied Physics A 122.8 (2016): 777.
9. K. Chen, S. Bank, J. Lin, D. Akinwande, T. Lai, and Y. Wang, "Non-destructive measurement of photoexcited carrier transport in graphene with ultrafast grating imaging technique." Carbon (2016).
10. W. Wu, F. He, and Y. Wang, “Reversible Ultrafast Melting in Bulk CdSe”, Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 119, pp. 055701, (2016).
11. W. Wu, and Y. Wang, “Ultrafast carrier dynamics and coherent acoustic phonons in bulk CdSe”, Optics Letters, Vol. 40, Issue 1, pp. 64-67 (2015).
12. Y. Zhang and Y. Wang, “The effect of coherent optical phonons on thermal transport”, Appl. Phys. A (2014).