Title: The Next Energy Wave
Speaker: Prof. King-lap Wong (CUHK)
09:40-10:10, T.Y.Wong Hall LT, 5/F, Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building
Abstract: The rapid advances and significant achievements in renewable energy research in the past decade are truly impressive. This talk will provide a brief summary of the current status of biomass, solar, wind, nuclear energy and smart grid research. However, it is important to point out that the monotonic increase in funding for energy research ended last year; there was an 11 % drop in 2012, and a major development on another front just began. The abundantly available shale gas has forced many governments to change their energy policies. The current political landscape of the energy industry will be described, and the outlook for the next 30 years will be given based on the speaker's observation.
About speaker: Professor Wong graduated from the Physics Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1968. Then he went to the United States for graduate studies, and obtained his PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. After one postdoctoral year at Columbia University, he went to work for the Plasma Physics Laboratory of Princeton University from March 1, 1976 until his retirement on November 30, 2011 at the rank of Principal Research Physicist. The primary goal of this government laboratory is to develop nuclear fusion energy for peaceful applications. Professor Wong has been an American Physics Society Fellow since 1993, and a co-winner of the 2004 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. He has been doing energy research since he was a graduate student. Although the focus of his career was in nuclear fusion, he always pays close attention to all forms of energy research because the 1973 OPEC oil embargo vividly reminds him of the vulnerability of a modern society to energy shortage. The recent concern of global warming just makes it a more urgent situation. In March 2013, he joined CUHK as the Director of the Energy Engineering Program.

Title: Scalable Fabrication and Rational Design of Regular Arrays of Nanostructures for Efficient Solar Energy Harvesting
Speaker: Prof. Zhiyong Fan (HKUST)
10:30-11:00, T.Y.Wong Hall LT, 5/F, Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building
Abstract: Materials made of nano/micro-structures have unique physical properties, such as fast carrier transport, high surface-to-volume ratio, mechanical flexibility, sub-wavelength optical waveguiding, etc. These intriguing properties can be harnessed for a variety of applications in electronics and photonics. Particularly, a number of nanostructures have been investigated efficient for solar energy harvesting, they have demonstrated light trapping capability to improve optical absorption, as well as improved photo-carrier collection performance. However, low cost and scalable fabrication processes of nanostructures, and rational design guidelines for efficient solar energy harvesting devices are still in urgent need. In the past, we have developed a set of versatile approaches to fabricate a variety of three-dimensional (3-D) nanostructures, including nanowells, nanopillars, nanospikes, nanocones, as well as more complex integrated nanostructures. These 3-D structures have demonstrated geometry dependent photon management properties thus have promising potential for solar energy harvesting applications. In this presentation, the low cost and scalable nanofabrication approach for regular arrays of nanostructures will be introduced, followed by systematic optical property investigations on these nanostructures using both experimental and finite element modeling approaches. These fundamental investigations provide design guidelines for solar energy harvesting devices. To explore their applications for efficient light harvesting, they have been fabricated into photovoltaic and water splitting devices. Our studies have shown that properly designed and engineered 3-D nanostructures can demonstrate improved performance as compared to their conventional planar counterparts, indicating their potency for implementing cost-effective energy harvesting devices in large scale.
About speaker: Dr. Zhiyong Fan received his B. S. and M. S. degree on physical electronics from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1998 and 2001. He received Ph.D. degree from University of California, Irvine in 2006 in Materials Science. From 2007 to 2010, he worked in University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow in department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, with a joint appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In May 2010, he joined department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as an assistant professor. Dr. Fan’s research interest focuses on fabrication and characterization of nanomaterials and nanostructures; their applications for electronics and energy harvesting. Up-until-now, Dr. Fan has published close to 70 peer review research articles with ~3,700 citations.

11: 45-12:15, T.Y.Wong Hall LT, 5/F, Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building