BES: Understanding Thermal, Mechanical, and Structural Behaviors of Nanostructured Materials using Novel Ultraviolet Characterization Tools

Next-generation energy, nanoelectronic, and quantum technologies rely on the discovery, integration, and optimization of novel advanced materials. Importantly, predicting and characterizing the functional properties of these materials—e.g. thermal conductivities, mechanical stiffness, and magnetic behavior—is critical for their implementation into energy-efficient devices. Advances in energy storage, electric vehicles, communication, computation, thermoelectrics, electronics, and quantum technologies are reliant on understanding the transport of energy carriers (phonons, electrons, spins) in complex systems. However, as devices become increasingly complex with novel materials, 3D geometries, interfaces, and nanoscale dimensions, conventional models fail to accurately predict the functional properties and, traditional imaging and metrology tools cannot probe the relevant behaviors on their intrinsic length- and time-scales.