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Eduardo Castillo
Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
I am currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering. I am working with Dr. Theodorian Borca-Tasciuc as my principal advisor and Dr. Yamaguchi from the Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy as my co-advisor. My research focuses on thermoelectric energy conversion and thermoelectric (TE) characterization of nanostructured materials.
More specifically, I am developing novel techniques to characterize thermal and thermoelectric transport properties (thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient) of new materials in order to find TE materials of high thermoelectric energy conversion efficiency. Currently, I am developing new techniques based on the transient Harman method to measure TE properties of nanowires other nanostructures.
In low dimensional structures, both the electrical as well as the thermal interface contact resistances play an important role in the material characterization, devices efficiency and specials methods are necessary to quantify their influence. Then, my goal is using Terahertz radiation as a non-contact probe to extract the intrinsic properties of the material. My expectations from this work are to understand the theoretical foundations of the THz radiation, its influence in the thermoelectric properties of the material; and also to eliminate the nanofabrication process which will finally lead to scanning capability for faster and accurate measurements.
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