Associate Professor

Location

Chemical Engineering

B-28 2046 NCRC
2800 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2800

Additional Title(s)

Graduate Recruiting Chair

Primary Website

https://lenert.engin.umich.edu/

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD Mechanical Engineering 2014
SM Mechanical Engineering 2010

University of Iowa
BSE Mechanical Engineering 2008

Research Interests

At the Lenert Lab, we study transport at the nanoscale and apply this knowledge to develop tailored materials for system-level improvements in power generation, energy storage, thermal management and desalination. Here are several avenues of our ongoing research efforts:

• We focus on solar energy systems that utilize the full spectrum of sunlight and are compatible with inexpensive storage such as thermal and chemical.
• We study and develop nanoporous composites with tailored transport properties and control over the spectral content of energy flow for applications in building thermal management.
• We probe fundamental transport at the nanoscale by integrating optical and micro-fabricated platforms with environmental and thermal control.

Our work is multidisciplinary and collaborative. We aim to complement experimental efforts with models in order to complete our understanding and optimize our designs. Ultimately, we aim to help address global challenges at the energy-water nexus by bridging the gap between system level design and mesoscale materials science.

For more details, please visit The Lenert Lab.

Biography

Positions held at U-M

Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, 2022-
Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering Department 2016-2022
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mechanical Engineering, 2014-2016

Publications

Please see Google Scholar or ORCID for a full list.

Berquist, Z. J., Turaczy, K. K. & Lenert, A. Plasmon-Enhanced Greenhouse Selectivity for High-Temperature Solar Thermal Energy Conversion. ACS Nano (2020) doi:10.1021/acsnano.0c04982.

Fan, D. et al. Near-perfect photon utilization in an air-bridge thermophotovoltaic cell. Nature 586, 237–241 (2020).

Kim, H., McSherry, S., Brown, B. & Lenert, A. Selectively Enhancing Solar Scattering for Direct Radiative Cooling through Control of Polymer Nanofiber Morphology. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 12, 43553–43559 (2020).

Hill, A. J. et al. Thermally induced restructuring of Pd@CeO2 and Pd@SiO2 nanoparticles as a strategy for enhancing low-temperature catalytic activity. ACS Catalysis 10, (2020).

Lenert, A. et al. A nanophotonic solar thermophotovoltaic device. Nature Nanotechnology 9, (2014).