DARPA selects Tian for 2023 Young Faculty Award

Zhiting Tian, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to receive a 2023 Young Faculty Award (YFA). DARPA will be funding Tian’s research proposal titled “Transient, nanoscale temperature mapping of active RF devices.”

DARPA’s stated goal for the YFA program is “to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions…to expose them to Department of Defense needs and DARPA’s mission to create and prevent technological surprise. The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research that enables transformative DoD capabilities.”

Tian’s proposed research program will tackle the problem of how to create temperature maps of active RF devices accurately and in real-time. RF (radio-frequency) modules are a ubiquitous and essential part of DoD communications and operations. A current limitation on RF devices is the inability of Gallium-Nitride (GaN) semiconductors to perform well under the large power output densities required for longer-range communications.

Having in situ temperature maps of active RF devices will help researchers understand where to focus their efforts to make GaN (and other) semiconductors more reliable and efficient at the larger power output densities required.

Tian plans a two-pronged modeling and experimental approach. “By developing an accurate and efficient co-design platform where phonon physics is included and a new nanoscale thermometry, our work will deliver, for the first time, an internal temperature map of RF devices in situ, Tian said. “The capabilities provided by this project will yield comprehensive insights into heat flow in active RF devices and guide the design of thermal management architectures that target specific thermal loads and therefore reduce overdesign that contributes to size and weight.”

Her hope is to create a platform that will allow for rapid testing of device designs without having to build many iterations of experimental prototypes--saving time, effort, and resources.

Tian, who joined the Sibley School faculty in 2018, has previously received an NSF CAREER Award (2017), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2018), a NASA Early Stage Innovations Award (2021), and an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award (2021). She was elected a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2019.