David Cahill is the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the U. Illinois after earning his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from Cornell University and working as a postdoctoral research associate at the IBM Watson Research Center. He served as department head from 2010 to 2018. His research program advances physical insights on thermal transport at the nanoscale; extremes of low and high thermal conductivity; the thermal conductivity of soft matter; the thermal science of magnetic materials; and the transport of heat and mass in battery materials. Cahill received the 2018 Innovation in Materials Characterization Award of the Materials Research Society, the 2015 Touloukian Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the 2023 Klemens Award from the International Conference on Phonon Scattering in Condensed Matter, and the 2024 Thermal Conductivity Award from the International Thermal Conductivity Conference; and is a fellow of the MRS, the American Physical Society, the AAAS, and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.
Research
Research Statement
Thermal management is a critical issue in a wide variety of applications of thin films materials from state-of-the-art microprocessors to turbine engines. Heat can be carried by any excitation of the solid that is thermally excited: lattice vibrations, electrons, spin-waves. The lifetime or coherence of these excitations have a complex dependence the microstructure of materials; at nanometer length scales, the transfer of heat between various excitations at interfaces becomes the controlling factor. Our group studies the basic science of thermal transport in materials with a particular emphasis on the exchange of thermal energy at solid-solid and solid-liquid interfaces. We have recently developed new and powerful methods of characterizing nanoscale thermal transport using ultrafast laser metrology of precisely controlled thin film multilayers and suspensions of metallic nanoparticles. We are currently working to extend our experimental methods to higher resolution in time, space, and energy.
Research Interests
nanoscale thermal transport, GHz frequency acoustics, magnetic materials, heat and mass transport in soft materials, ultrafast magneto-optics, materials property microscopy
Research Areas
Ceramics
Electronic Materials
Metals
Polymers
Research Topics
Electronics & Communications
Education
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1989Cornell UniversityPh.D. in Physics
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1984Ohio State UniversityB.S. in Engineering Physics
Positions
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1991 · PresentProfessor (Materials Science and Engineering)University of Illinois