Program:
Photothermal heating is involved in a wide range of scientific phenomena and technological applications. For instance, laser-matter interaction is studied for biomedical applications or for triggering structural and chemical processes in heat-responsive systems. Of great relevance in the contemporary efforts for a sustainable future, sunlight-driven photothermal heating is exploited for distillation, desalination, evaporation up to thermal photovoltaics.
This course consists of two parts: first, an overview of photothermal applications, related materials, and the basics of the photothermal heating physics will be provided; then, students will be divided in groups and will participate in a laboratory part for the measurement of photothermal heating curves in an absorbing nanofluid and data analysis.
Verification: Report with the fitting of heating curves and calculation of the light-to-heat conversion efficiency (group report) + 1 page resume of a scientific article about photothermal heating appeared in the last 2 years (single student report).
- Docente: Vincenzo Amendola