Gang Chen

About

Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He serves as the Director of the Rohsenow Kendall Laboratories. His research interests encompass heat transfer and energy conversion, nanotechnology, clean water, and related fields. Chen's work involves experimental, theoretical, and numerical studies of fundamental thermal energy conversion and transport mechanisms at micro- and nanometer scales, with applications to thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, thermophotovoltaics, microelectronics, photonics, thermal and electrochemical energy storage, nanoengineered materials with high and low thermal conductivities, thermal interface materials, ultrafast transport processes, thermal radiation, electromagnetic metamaterials, nanofabrication, photomolecular effects, desalination, waste water treatment, atmospheric water harvesting, air-conditioning, and drying. He has made significant contributions to understanding and developing advanced materials and devices for energy and thermal management, including demonstrating cubic boron arsenide as an exceptional semiconductor material with high thermal conductivity, which was recognized as one of the Physics World Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2022. Chen's work has earned him numerous honors, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2023, fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and membership in the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He has…

Research topics

• Materials science
• Physics
• Thermodynamics
• Chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Optoelectronics
• Condensed matter physics
• Engineering physics
• Organic chemistry
• Chemical physics

Selected publications

• Thermoelectric cooling materials

  Nature Materials · 2020 · 754 citations

  DOI

• Phonon-engineered extreme thermal conductivity materials

  Nature Materials · 2021 · 750 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Giant thermopower of ionic gelatin near room temperature

  Science · 2020 · 709 citations

  ] for thermogalvanic effect. A proof-of-concept wearable device consisting of 25 unipolar elements generated more than 2 volts and a peak power of 5 microwatts using body heat. This ionic gelatin shows promise for environmental heat-to-electric energy conversion using ions as energy carriers.

  DOI

• Ultrahigh thermal conductivity in isotope-enriched cubic boron nitride

  Science · 2020 · 311 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  B. In comparison, we found that the isotope enhancement of κ is considerably lower for boron phosphide and boron arsenide as the identical isotopic mass disorder becomes increasingly invisible to phonons. The ultrahigh κ in conjunction with its wide bandgap (6.2 electron volts) makes cBN a promising material for microelectronics thermal management, high-power electronics, and optoelectronics applications.

  DOI

• Bi-directional tuning of thermal transport in SrCoOx with electrochemically induced phase transitions

  Nature Materials · 2020 · 149 citations

  DOI

Recent grants

• SGER: Collaborative Research in Low-Cost Manufacturing of High Performance Thermoelectric Nanocomposites

  NSF · $50k · 2008–2009

• NIRT: Integrated Study of Thermoelectric Transport and Energy Conversion in Bismuth-Based Nanowires

  NSF · $1.3M · 2005–2010

• Phonon Heat Conduction in Nanostructures: 3D to 1D Transition

  NSF · $310k · 2008–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Zhifeng Ren

  University of Houston

  219 shared

• M. S. Dresselhaus

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  110 shared

• Keivan Esfarjani

  University of Virginia

  71 shared

• Jiawei Zhou

  Stanford University

  69 shared

• Svetlana V. Boriskina

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  67 shared

• Yucheng Lan

  66 shared

• Shuo Chen

  57 shared

• Dezhi Wang

  Central South University

  54 shared

Labs

• MIT Department of Mechanical EngineeringPI

Education

• PhD, Mechanical Engineering

  University of California Berkeley UC Data

  1993

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