People At The Texas Center For Superconductivity

TcSUH In The News

TcSUH’s Troy Christensen Presented Award from UH Staff Council

August 12, 2023
TcSUH’s Troy Christensen Presented Award from UH Staff Council
Congratulations to Troy Christensen for UH Friends of Staff Council Award

Houston, TX – Troy Christensen, Program Manager 2 at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston, was honored with a 2023 Friends of Staff Council Award at the Staff Council Awards and Scholarship Ceremony on July 19 at the University of Houston M.D. Anderson Library Rockwell Pavilion. The annual event celebrates award recipients’ unwavering commitment and invaluable contributions to the University’s mission.

The Staff Council selects recipients who epitomize the diverse aspects of staff excellence, such as leadership, innovation, customer service, and teamwork. In response to the award, Troy stated, “I’m honored to have received a Friend of Staff Council Award. I’ve helped out with Staff Council programs and events for about 20 years, both as a volunteer and as a member, and I believe the organization is helping to build a stronger UH community.”

During the past year, Troy has been involved on the Cougar First Impressions planning committee, focusing on volunteer scheduling and resources, and the Memberships and Elections committee, where he helps organize the annual Staff Council member and officer elections, as well as staff appointments to university-wide committees as part of campus shared governance between UH administration and students, faculty, and staff. Troy’s efforts on behalf of the University are well-known and recognized. He was selected in 2014 as a recipient of the UH Staff Excellence Award, and in 2017 as a recipient of the UH Community Service Award at the annual UH President’s Excellence Awards ceremony.


Prof. Zhifeng Ren will discuss Transportation: Options for Sustainability, in a broadcast today at 3:00 p.m. Central time.

June 16, 2023
Prof. Zhifeng Ren will discuss Transportation: Options for Sustainability, in a broadcast today at 3:00 p.m. Central time.
Prof. Zhifeng Ren will discuss Transportation: Options for Sustainability, in a broadcast today at 3:00 p.m. Central time.

Transportation: Options for Sustainability

Planet Philadelphia

4-5:00 PM Friday 6/16/23

92.9 FM WGGT-LP in Philadelphia and live streaming at gtownradio.com.

Johanna Bozuwa is the Executive Director at the Climate and Community Project, a climate policy think tank. Her research focuses on extraction and fossil fuels, energy justice and democracy plus the political economy of transitions and has been published in numerous nationally-known outlets. She talks about the Project’s study describing the way the U.S. can shift to EVs (electric vehicles) without widespread, destructive mining.

Dr. Zhifeng Ren is an M.D. Anderson Chair Professor in the Department of Physics and also Director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity, both at the University of Houston. He specializes in carrier mobility among many other things. He discusses a plan for a multifunctional highway system incorporating superconductor levitated vehicles and liquefied hydrogen. If the system were built, it would provide energy and travel at 500 miles/hour without using greenhouse gasses.

For more information, read the original news release.


Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston Holds 58th Student Research Symposium

May 05, 2023
Judges Bestow Seven Prizes for Graduate Research Presentations
Congratulations to prize winners in the 58th TcSUH Student Research Symposium held on Friday, April 28

May 3, 2023

Houston, TX – Fourteen graduate students presented their research at the 58th Student Research Symposium on Friday, April 28. The symposium is a juried competition established by the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston to provide students with a formal venue to enhance their presentation skills, interact with other students and faculty from various disciplines, and compete for cash prizes. Winning students are eligible to apply for TcSUH Travel Awards, which help to defray expenses to present their work at conferences and workshops.

Three TcSUH-affiliated faculty members served as judges: Professors Jiming Bao (Electrical & Computer Engineering), Audrius Brazdeikis (Physics), and Arnold Guloy (Chemistry). Seven prize winners were selected based on originality of research (25%), quality of research (25%), quality of presentation (25%), and skillful use of visual aids (25%).

Chairs for the three sessions held throughout the day were Professors James Meen and Vassiliy Lubchenko, and Dr. Lihong Zhao.

Professor Zhifeng Ren, M. D. Anderson Chair Professor of Physics and Director of TcSUH, said the quality of all fourteen presentations was outstanding, which made it difficult to narrow down the selections. He commended all students for their efforts before announcing the judges' results. They are listed by Prize as follows:

First Prize:

Mr. Minh Dang Nguyen, Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemistry, received the First Prize for his presentation on "Tailoring the Size, Shape, and Crystallinity of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Studies of Nano-Magnetism and their Potential Applications." His adviser is Professor T. Randall Lee. Mr. Nguyen's research focuses on synthesizing magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles with different sizes and shapes for studies of their magnetic properties for biosensing and biomedicine. He obtained his BSc in Advanced Materials Science and Nanotechnology from the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi.

2nd Prizes:

Ms. Mina Moradnia is a 5th-year Ph.D. candidate in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Cullen College of Education. Her adviser is Professor Jae-Hyan Ryou. She won the 2nd Prize for her presentation on "Single-Crystalline III-N Film Growth for Photonic, Electronic, Sensing, and Energy Harvesting Applications." Ms. Moradnia's UH research focuses on the process development of semiconductor materials and devices with top skills in thin film deposition and growth, along with materials characterization/analysis techniques. She received her Master's in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Tabriz and her Bachelor's degree from Shiraz University.

Mr. Surya Pratap Singh Solanki is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering under the supervision of Professor Lars C. Grabow. He won the 2nd Prize for his research entitled "Dynamically Excited Catalysts with Superior Oxidation Activity." Mr. Solanki's research focuses on understanding the catalytic properties of metal-based catalysts using both computational and experimental techniques. He is also interested in investigating the effect of periodic reaction conditions on catalyst performance. He obtained his B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)- Roorkee.

Mr. Jacob C. Hickey is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in Professor Jakoah Brgoch's group in the Department of Chemistry and Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. He was awarded the 2nd Prize for his presentation entitled "The Limits of Proxy-Guided Superhard Materials Screening." Mr. Hickey's research involves using a combined approach of experimental and computational-based methods to discover new hard materials. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry at San Jose State University.

3rd Prizes:

Ms. Fengjiao Pan is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics, under the supervision of Professor Zhifeng Ren. She received a 3rd Prize for her presentation on "Observation of Persistent Hot Carrier Diffusion in Boron Arsenide Single Crystals Synthesized by Chemical Vapor Transport Method." Ms. Pan's research focuses on the synthesis of cubic boron arsenide crystals using the chemical vapor transport method. She also serves as Co-Chair of the TcSUH Student & Postdoctoral Fellow Seminar Series. She obtained her Master's degree in Power Engineering from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.

Mr. Xin Shi is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics. His adviser is Professor Zhifeng Ren. Mr. Shi shared the 3rd Prize for his presentation entitled "Physical Origins of the Distinct Transport Behavior Among Thermoelectric AMg2Sb2 Compounds (A = Ca, Sr, Sm, Yb, and Mg)." His current research interests focus on designing high-performance thermoelectric materials and understanding their intrinsic physical properties. He received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and his M.S. in Materials Science from Northeastern University in China.

Mr. Chaoshan Wu is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Yan Yao's group in the Materials Science and Engineering Program and Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. He shared the 3rd Prize for his presentation entitled "Mixed-ionic-electronic-conducting Interlayer Design for High-Performance Solid-State Lithium-Metal Batteries." Mr. Wu's research focuses on the development and Operando characterization of all-solid-state Li-metal batteries. He obtained his BSc degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Zhejiang University of Technology in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

To recognize the achievements of each prize winner, the IEEE Council on Superconductivity (IEEE CSC) is offering a free IEEE student membership for one year. Once the students become IEEE student members, they are eligible to join the Council, where there are opportunities to apply for student fellowships, assistance for attending conferences, and engage in leadership activities for young professionals.

For more information, read the original news release.


University of Houston’s Breakthrough ‘Super Cool Conductor’ Advances to Final Round of DOE Competition

May 04, 2023
University of Houston’s Breakthrough ‘Super Cool Conductor’ Advances to Final Round of DOE Competition
Congratulations Selva Research Group DOE Story

A University of Houston research team, the Selva Research Group, is one of seven teams that advanced to the final stage of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Conductivity-enhanced materials for Affordable, Breakthrough Leapfrog Electric and thermal applications Conductor Manufacturing Prize or CABLE Prize.

The three-stage DOE competition has committed up to $4.5 million to accelerate the development of affordable, manufacturable materials that conduct electricity more efficiently and help propel America into a clean energy economy.

The UH team’s “Super Cool Conductor,” a very thin wire, is a rare-earth, high-temperature superconductor that can be manufactured at half the cost of copper cables that are currently used for power transmission in most cities.

The Selva Group won the first stage of the CABLE competition in 2021 by successfully demonstrating its breakthrough conductive material – the UH high-performance superconductor – for electrical and thermal energy applications. In the second stage, the teams had to provide a sample of their material for evaluation by CABLE prize-approved testing labs. The UH conductor successfully competed in the Beat Copper contest and demonstrated the potential to replace copper in motors, cables and generators. In addition, the unique magnetic properties of the superconductor make it well-suited for use in compact fusion power plants and other similar uses according to the DOE website.

Venkat Selvamanickam, head of the Selva Research Group, M.D. Anderson Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and director of the Advanced Manufacturing Institute, is justifiably proud of his team and this second win.

“While there is a strong track record of the University of Houston in materials discoveries and innovations, our success in the CABLE competition showcases the capability of the Selva Research Group and the University in scaling up laboratory-scale advances to manufacturing,” Selvamanickam said. “Our success demonstrates that a robust manufacturing research infrastructure in academia can be effective in transitioning innovations out of the lab to benefit society.”

Each Stage 2 winning team earned $200,000 in cash and more in vouchers. The seven winners advance to the third and final stage of the competition, where they will have to develop a detailed business plan for their product and manufacture a larger sample of their materials for additional testing. Up to four teams will eventually split a total prize pool of at least $2 million at the end of Stage 3.

Selvamanickam and his team feel ready to meet the challenge of this final round.

The high-performance superconductor tapes produced by the Selva Group are already used to make small-scale prototypes of magnets, coils and cables by different partner entities. The team is working to scale up its technology to pilot-scale manufacturing of longer tapes needed for full-scale devices, within three years.

“The students and researchers in the Selva Research Group have been diligently advancing our high-performance superconductor technology, overcoming many technical hurdles in every stage,” Selvamanickam said. “All of us are motivated to realize our ultimate goal of superconductors powering the clean energy future.”

Selvamanickam is recognized globally for his research to develop better manufacturing technologies for thin film superconductor wire. His team was the first to manufacture thin film superconductor wire, which was used in 2008 to power 25,000 households in Albany, N.Y., and now is used by more than 200 institutions around the world for such things as wind generators, energy storage, power transmission cables, magnetically levitated trains, medical imaging and defense applications.

“We are proud of the work Dr. Selvamanickam and his team are doing to overcome obstacles and make this innovative and affordable wire technology available for broadscale commercial use,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at UH.

For more information, read the original news release.


Imagine highways that efficiently transport electricity, hydrogen fuel—and vehicles at staggering speeds

May 02, 2023
Imagine highways that efficiently transport electricity, hydrogen fuel—and vehicles at staggering speeds

Highways could one day transport electricity and hydrogen fuel, as well as enabling vehicles to travel at nearly 500 miles per hour, according to a new study. The setup would combine three green technologies into one piece of infrastructure, making each one financially more feasible.

The system is a twist on maglev transportation, in which cars containing superconducting material are suspended over a magnetic guideway. Maglev systems transport vehicles frictionlessly, but are very expensive.

Superconductors can also conduct electricity highly efficiently, without any loss of power along the way. But superconductor transmission lines are extremely costly because they only work at temperatures more than 100 degrees below zero.

Meanwhile hydrogen is a promising green fuel source, but it’s difficult to transport because it’s a gas at room temperature, and liquid hydrogen pipelines are expensive because of the cooling required.

In the new study, researchers propose flipping the conventional design of maglev systems upside down with magnetic vehicles suspended over a superconducting guideway, a setup they dub SClev.

For more information, read the original news release.


Silver Nanoparticles Spark Key Advance in Thermoelectricity for Power Generation

May 01, 2023
Silver Nanoparticles Spark Key Advance in Thermoelectricity for Power Generation
Congrats to Prof. Zhifeng Ren and former group members for Nature Energy publication

Several high-performance thermoelectric materials have been discovered over the past two decades, but without efficient devices to convert the energy they produce into emission-free power, their promise has been unfulfilled. Now an international team of scientists led by a University of Houston physicist and several of his former students has reported a new approach to constructing the thermoelectric modules, using silver nanoparticles to connect the modules’ electrode and metallization layers.

The work, described in a paper published May 1 in Nature Energy, should accelerate the development of advanced modules for power generation and other uses. The use of silver nanoparticles was tested for stability in modules built of three different state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials, designed to operate across a wide range of temperatures.

Thermoelectric materials have drawn increasing interest because of their potential as a source of clean energy, produced when the material converts heat – such as waste heat generated by power plants or other industrial processes – into electricity by exploiting the flow of heat current from a warmer area to a cooler area. But taking advantage of that ability requires finding a material that can connect the hot and cool sides of the material both electrically and thermally, without interfering with the material’s performance.

The connective material, or solder, is melted to create an interface between the two sides. That means the solder must have a higher melting point than the operating temperature of the device in order to remain stable while the device is working, said Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH and a corresponding author on the paper. If the thermoelectric material operates at hotter temperatures, the connective layer will re-melt.

But it can also be a problem if the connective material has too high a melting point, because high temperatures can affect the stability and performance of the thermoelectric materials during the connection process. The ideal connective material, then, would both have a relatively low melting point for assembling the module, so as not to destabilize the thermoelectric materials, but then be able to withstand high operating temperatures without re-melting.

Silver has valuable properties for such a connective material, with high thermal conductivity and high electrical conductivity. But it also has a relatively high melting point, at 962 degrees Centigrade, which can affect the stability of many thermoelectric materials. For this work, the researchers took advantage of the fact that silver nanoparticles have a much lower melting point than bulk silver. The nanoparticles returned to a bulk state after the module was assembled, regaining the higher melting point for operations.

“If you make silver into nanoparticles, the melting point could be as low as 400 degrees or 500 degrees C, depending on the particle size. That means you can use the device at 600 C or 700 C with no problem, as long as the operating temperature remains below the melting point of bulk silver, or 962 C,” said Ren, who is also M.D. Anderson Professor of Physics at UH. He worked on the project with five former students and post-doctoral researchers from the Ren research group; they are now at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen, China, and the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The researchers tested the silver nanoparticles with three well-known thermoelectric materials, each of which operates at a different temperature.

A lead tellurium-based module, which works at a low temperature of about 573 Kelvin up to about 823 K (300 C to 550 C) produced a heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of about 11% and remained stable after 50 thermal cycles, according to the researchers.

They also used the silver nanoparticles as the connective material in modules using low-temperature bismuth telluride and a half-Heusler high-temperature material, indicating the concept would work for a variety of thermoelectric materials and purposes.

Different materials are used depending on the intended heat source, Ren said, to ensure the materials can withstand the applied heat. “But this paper proves that whatever the material, we can use the same silver nanoparticles for the solder as long as the applied heat does not go above 960 degrees C,” in order to remain below the melting point of bulk silver, he said.

In addition to Ren, co-authors on the paper include Li Yin, Fan Yang, Xin Bao, Zhipeng Du, Xinyu Wang, Jinxuan Cheng, Hongjun Ji, Jiehe Sui, Xingjun Liu, Feng Cao, Jun Mao, Mingyu Li and Qian Zhang, all with the Harbin Institute of Technology; Wenhua Xue with the Harbin Institute of Technology and the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics; and Yumei Wang with the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics.

For more information, read the original news release.


Zhifeng Ren Elected 2023 MRS Fellow, Honored with Materials Science Leader Award

April 20, 2023
Zhifeng Ren Elected 2023 MRS Fellow, Honored with Materials Science Leader Award
Congratulations to Prof. Zhifeng Ren, Elected 2023 MRS Fellow; Honored with Materials Science Leader Award

Zhifeng Ren Elected 2023 MRS Fellow, Honored with Materials Science Leader Award

For more information, read the original news release.


Jun Mao, a former Postdoctoral Fellow and Ph.D. graduate at the Texas Center for Superconductivity, was selected by an international panel for the MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 (China) award.

April 12, 2023
Jun Mao, a former Postdoctoral Fellow and Ph.D. graduate at the Texas Center for Superconductivity, was selected by an international panel for the MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 (China) award.
Congratulations to Dr. Jun Mao, Former Postdoctoral Fellow and Ph.D. graduate atTcSUH for MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 (China) Award

Jun Mao, a former Postdoctoral Fellow and Ph.D. graduate at the Texas Center for Superconductivity, was selected by an international panel for the MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 (China) award.

The prestigious designation in the Inventor category was announced in 2023 after a strenuous review process. Mao is currently a Professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen, China.

Since Joule heating in electronics can significantly impact its performance and stability, electronics that have been used for communication applications have a stringent requirement on temperature. Thermoelectric technology enables rapid heating and cooling via tuning the direction and magnitude of the electric current - this is the only technology that can realize precise temperature control on electronics quickly. However, the application of traditional thermoelectric cooling devices is limited by the commercial Bi2Te3-based alloys. As a result, the discovery of promising better thermoelectric cooling materials is of great significance for promoting the widespread application of thermoelectric cooling technology.

To explore promising candidates that differ from conventional semiconducting materials, Mao mainly focuses on semimetals, a type of material that has long been considered unpromising due to its low Seebeck coefficient. However, he discovered that not all the semimetals will have intrinsically low Seebeck coefficient. As a result, based on the strategy of manipulating the asymmetry of the band structure, Mao has successfully identified the Mg3Bi2-based semimetals with high Seebeck coefficient and very good thermoelectric performance. In fact, this is the first time in the past seven decades that a new thermoelectric cooling material, which is comparable to the commercial n-type Bi2Te3-based alloys, has been identified.

Mao received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Houston in 2018, and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Texas Center for Superconductivity, both under adviser Zhifeng Ren, M.D. Anderson Chair Professor in the Department of Physics. He joined the Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) in 2021 as a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He plans to develop advanced Mg3Bi2-based thermoelectric coolers in future studies.

For more information, read the original news release.