Yimin Wu

Abstract:  

Sustainable energy is one of the greatest challenges facing our planet this century. Interfaces are key to the realization of high-performance optoelectronics, batteries, and catalysts that are promising for sustainable energy. In order to shape our sustainable energy future, innovative research must be undertaken to understand interfaces at the atomic level. In situ characterization of solid/solid, solid/liquid, solid/gas interface reactions at atomic scale under realistic working conditions becomes truly ambitious. This may be realized through utilizing a multifunctional nanofluidic device, cross transmission electron microscopy, X-ray microscopy and spectroscopy platforms. To accomplish this, interfaces were characterized with preserved nature under various electrical biasing, light, pressure and temperature conditions. This approach, referred to as “Integrated Imaging”, establishes an entirely new platform to understand interfaces, which provides design strategies for new materials and devices that may frame the next generation’s sustainable energy.

Biography: Dr. Yimin Wu is an assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology, Director of Materials Interfaces Foundry, at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Wu received his DPhil degree in Materials from the University of Oxford, UK in 2013. From 2013-2014, he worked as a SinBeRise Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prior to joining the faculty at Waterloo in 2019, he was focusing on the advanced catalysts and battery research in the Center for Nanoscale Materials and Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), Argonne National Laboratory and worked as a research assistant professor at University of Illinois. He has authored and co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed journal papers, which includes Nature, Nature Energy, Nature communications. He is also listed as an inventor on 1 US/international patent. He has delivered over 20 invited lectures across the world in last 5 years. He has been awarded several prizes including UK EPSRC Doctoral Prize in 2012 and SinBeRise Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Calfornia, Berkeley in 2013. Professor Wu’s research focuses on the design of new energy materials for solar fuels and batteries; and energy efficient neuromorphic computing through a deep understanding of energy transduction processes at interfaces.

• Time: 10.00 AM
• Location: 206 Furnas Hall
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