MATERIALS SPECIAL SEMINAR
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
11:00 – 12:00 am ~ 501 Ferris Hall
Speaker
Prof. Winnie Wong-Ng
Materials Measurement Science Division, NIST
Gaithersburg, MD
Overview of Thermoelectric Research at the
National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
A challenge of the global economy in the new millennium is for both emerging and mature industries to provide
inexpensive, efficient, compact, and environmentally friendly technologies for energy conversion applications. In
response to these needs, recent research activities in the Materials for Sustainability Group of the Materials Measurement
Science Division at NIST have included standards, metrologies, and data for thermoelectric materials as part of its
program. The development and distribution of standard reference materials (SRM) for instrument calibration and for
inter-laboratory data comparison, and development of materials databases (such as crystallographic and phase equilibria)
have been some of the NIST core scientific activities. In this talk, I will give some background information on
thermoelectric materials, followed by a discussion of our efforts on structural characterization and pertinent phase
diagram determination. I will also discuss our development of Seebeck coefficient standards for bulk thermoelectric
materials, and the metrology developments for combinatorial films for thermoelectric applications.
Winnie Wong-Ng received a B. Sc. degree in Chemistry from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Ph.D. degree in Inorganic
Chemistry from Louisiana State University, followed by post-doctoral and research associate/lecturer appointments at the Chemistry
Department of University of Toronto, Canada. After serving at the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) as a critical
review scientist, she joined the Ceramics Division of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a staff chemist in 1988.
Her main research areas at NIST have been measurements and standards, phase equilibria, crystallography, and crystal chemistry of
technologically important materials, Currently she is the co-leader of the “Measurements, Standards, and Data for Energy Conversion
Materials” project at the Materials for Energy and Sustainable Development Group of the Materials Measurement Science Division of
NIST. She also works on a CO2 Mitigation project.
She is the current Trustee of the Electronics Division of American Ceramic Society (ACerS); an associated editor for J. American
Ceramic Society and for Powder Diffraction; a past member of the Board of Directors of ICDD (2000-2014), and of the Applied
Superconductivity Conference (2006-2012). She was also the past chair of the Electronics Division of ACerS (2005-2006); the
secretary/treasurer of US National Committee for Crystallography (2000-2003); and the local chair of 1998 American Crystallographic
Association (ACA) annual meeting. She is a fellow of the ACA, ACerS, and of ICDD. She received two Bronze Medals from the US
Department of Commerce (2002 and 2008), the 2004 McMurdie Award from ICDD, and the 2007 Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award
from ACerS. She was a co-organizer of more than 35 symposia/workshops and has more than 300 public ations.
Contact: Dr. Bin Hu – bhu@utk.edu