Faculty
Dr. Bo Zhao
Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Office Location N234 Engineering Building 1
Phone 713-743-2557
Fax 713-743-4503
Email bzhao8 [at] uh.edu
Website Zhao Group
Education
Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016
B. S., University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, 2011
Professional Experience
Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of Houston, 2021-Present
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Stanford University
Courses Taught
MECE 6397 Photonics for Renewable Energy (Graduate level) — Covered topics including light concentration, waveguides, photonic crystals, plasmonics, photon tunneling, far-field thermal radiation, and photonic energy harvesting technologies, near-field thermal radiation, thermodynamics of solar and thermophotovoltaics.
MECE 6333 Conduction and Radiation (Graduate level) — Covered topics including separation of variables, Green's function method, Laplace transform, radiative properties of materials, participating medium, radiative transfer equations, blackbody limit, and near-field thermal radiation.
MECE 4343 Thermal Design (Undergraduate level) — Covered topics including power and refrigeration cycles, mixture of ideal gases, basic combustion processes, thermodynamics of compressible flow, and thermal system design.
Research Interests
We are engaged in theoretical and experimental understanding of photonic transport processes for thermal management, energy conversion, and information processing. Current research directions include:
- Nonreciprocal photonics
- Thermal photonics and plasmonics
- Photon-mediated heat engines and refrigerators
- Electronic, photonic, and thermal circuits
- Radiative properties: tunability, symmetry, nonreciprocity, topology, and beyond
- Enhanced radiative heat transfer
- Photon chemical potential and light emission from nonequilibrium bodies
- Solar energy harvesting and radiative cooling
- Electromagnetic theory
- Quantum effects in photon transport processes
Awards & Honors
NSF CAREER Award June 2025
Applied Physics Letters Rising Star Award Finalist Nov. 2024
Raymond Viskanta Young Scientist Award from Elsevier/JQSRT June 2023
50-in-5 Scholars from UH Jan. 2022
Scientific Contribution Award of the Heat Transfer Society of Japan June 2018
Georgia Tech Travel Grant Award June 2015
Best Poster Award in ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE), San Diego, CA, USA Nov. 2013
Best Bachelor's Thesis Award June 2011
China National Encouragement Scholarship Oct. 2009
First Prize of the 7th China National Zhou Pei-Yuan Competition in Mechanics May 2009
Selected Publications
- Lee, J., Farias, M., Aparicio, H., Li, H., Zhao, B., Ahmed, F., Li, P., Xu, B., and Li, J., "Novel Development of Boron-Enhanced Inconel 718 with Superior Thermomechanical Properties for High-Temperature Concentrated Solar Power Applications," Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Vol. 292, 113787 (2025).
- Noh, B.*, Jafari Ghalekohneh, S.*, Chen, M., Shen, J., Janzen, E., Zhou, L., Chen, P., Edgar, J., Zhao, B.^, and Dai, S.^, "Mode Conversion of Hyperbolic Phonon Polaritons in Engineered van der Waals structures," Under review in Nature Communications (2025).
- Zhao, B., “Radiation Imbalance: New Material Emits Better Than It Absorbs,” Physics, Vol. 18, p. 123 (2025).
- Jafari Ghalehkohne, S. and Zhao, B., "Perfect Heat Rectification and Circulation with Nonreciprocal Radiative Surfaces in the Far Field," Submitted to Physical Review Research (2025). [provisional application in process]
- Nabavi, B., Jafari Ghalehkohne, S., Shayegan, K., Tervo, E., Atwater, H., and Zhao, B., "High-Temperature Strong Nonreciprocal Thermal Radiation from Semiconductors," ACS Photonics, Vol. 12, p. 2767 (2025).
- Greffet, J-J., Vest, B., Bouchon, P., and Zhao, B., "Incandescent Metasurfaces: a Tutorial," APL Photonics, Vol. 9, p. 111101 (2024). [Editor’s Pick]
- Do, B.*, Jafari Ghalekohneh, S.*, Adebiyi, T., Zhao, B., and Zhang, R., "Automated Design of Nonreciprocal Thermal Emitters via Bayesian Optimization," Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 331, p. 109260 (2024). (2024).
- Shayegan, K., Hwang, J., Zhao, B., Raman, A., Atwater, H.A., "Broadband Nonreciprocal Thermal Emissivity and Absorptivity," Light: Science & Applications, Vol. 13, p. 176 (2024).
- Jafari Ghalekohneh, S., Du, C., and Zhao, B., "Controlling the Contrast Between Absorptivity and Emissivity in Nonreciprocal Thermal Emitters," Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 124, p. 101104 (2024). [Editor's Pick] [Featured Article] [Rising Star Virtual Collection]
- Shayegan, K., Biswas, S., Zhao, B., Fan, S., and Atwater, H.A., "Direct observation of the violation of Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation," Nature Photonics, Vol. 17, pp. 891-896 (2023).
- Guo, C.*, Asadchy, V.*, Zhao, B.*, and Fan, S., "Light Control with Weyl Semimetals," eLight, Vol. 3, p. 2 (2023). ^Equal contribution, same hereafter
- Park, Y., Zhao, B., and Fan, S., "Reaching the Ultimate Efficiency of Solar Energy Harvesting with a Nonreciprocal Multijunction Solar Cell," Nano Letters, Vol. 22, p. 448 (2022).
- Jafari Ghalekohneh, S. and Zhao, B., "Nonreciprocal Solar Thermophotovoltaics," Physical Review Applied, Vol. 18, p. 034083 (2022). [Priority application US 63/330,426] [Covered by global news media]
- Guo, C., Zhao, B., and Fan, S., "Adjoint Kirchhoff's Law and General Symmetry Constraints of All Thermal Emitters," Physical Review X, Vol. 12, p. 021023 (2022).
- Chorsi, H., Cheng, B., Zhao, B., Toudert, J., Asadchy, V., Shoron, O.F., Fan, S., and Matsunaga, R., "Topological Materials for Functional Optoelectronic Devices," Advanced Functional Materials, p. 2110655 (2022).
- Zhao, B., Wang, J., Zhao, Z., Guo, C., Yu, Z., and Fan, S., "Nonreciprocal Thermal Emitters Using Metasurfaces with Multiple Diffraction Channels," Physical Review Applied, Vol. 16, p. 064001 (2021).
- Zhao, B.*, Assawaworrarit, S.*, Santhanam, P., Orenstein, M., and Fan, S., "High-Performance Photonic Transformers for DC Voltage Conversion," Nature Communications, Vol. 12, p. 4684 (2021). [US Patent No. 11,923,873]
- Park, Y., Asadchy, V., Zhao, B., Guo, C., Wang, J., and Fan, S., "Violating Kirchhoff's Law of Thermal Radiation in Semitransparent Structures," ACS Photonics, Vol. 8, p. 2417 (2021).
- Zhao, B.*, Guo, C.*, Garcia, C., Narang, P., and Fan, S., "Axion-Field-Enabled Nonreciprocal Thermal Radiation in Weyl Semimetals," Nano Letters, Vol. 20, pp. 1923−1927 (2020).
- Zhao, B.^ and Fan, S.^, “Chemical Potential of Photons and Its Implications For Controlling Radiative Heat Transfer,” Annual Review of Heat Transfer, Vol. 23, pp. 397-431 (2020). [Invited]
- Bhatt, G.R., Zhao, B., Roberts, S., Datta, I., Mohanty, A., Lin, T., Hartmann, J., St-Gelais, R., Fan, S., and Lipson, M., "Integrated Near-Field Thermo-Photovoltaics for On-Demand Heat Recycling," Nature Communications, Vol. 11, p. 2545 (2020).
- Guo, C., Zhao, B., Huang, D., and Fan, S., "Radiative Thermal Router Based on Tunable Magnetic Weyl Semimetals," ACS Photonics, Vol. 7, p. 3257 (2020).
- Asadchy, V., Guo, C., Zhao, B., and Fan, S., "Sub-Wavelength Passive Optical Isolators Using Photonic Structures Based on Weyl Semimetals," Advanced Optical Materials, p.2000100 (2020).
- Zhao, B.^, Shi, Y., Wang, J., Zhao, Z., Zhao, N., and Fan, S.^, "Near-Complete Violation of Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Radiation with a 0.3 T Magnetic Field," Optics Letters, Vol. 44, No. 17 (2019).
- Zhao, B., Buddhiraju, S., Santhanam, P., Chen, K., and Fan, S., "Self-Sustaining Thermophotonic Circuits," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 116, No. 24 (2019).
- Zhao, B., Santhanam, P., Chen, K., Buddhiraju, S., and Fan, S., "Near-Field Thermophotonic Systems for Low-Grade Waste-Heat Recovery," Nano Letters, Vol. 18, pp. 5224-5230 (2018). [Reported by Nature Photonics]
- Zhao, B., Chen, K., Buddhiraju, S., Bhatt, G., Lipson, M., and Fan, S., "High-Performance Near-Field Thermophotovoltaics for Waste Heat Recovery," Nano Energy, Vol. 41, p. 344 (2017).
- Zhao, B.^, Guizal B., Zhang Z. M., Fan S., and Antezza M.^, "Near-field Heat Transfer Between Graphene/hBN Multilayers," Physical Review B, Vol. 95, p. 245437 (2017).
- Zhao, B., and Zhang, Z.M., "Perfect Absorption with Trapezoidal Gratings Made of Natural Hyperbolic Materials," Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, Vol. 21, p. 123 (2017). [Selected as the cover of the issue]
- Zhao, B., and Zhang, Z.M., "Perfect Mid-Infrared Absorption by Hybrid Phonon-Plasmon Polaritons in hBN/Metal-Grating Anisotropic Structures," International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 106, p. 1025 (2017). [ESI Highly Cited Paper]
- Zhao, B., and Zhang, Z.M., "Enhanced Photon Tunneling by Surface Plasmon-Phonon Polaritons in Graphene/hBN Heterostructures," ASME Journal of Heat Transfer, Vol. 139, p. 022701 (2017).
- Watjen, J.I.*, Zhao, B.*, and Zhang, Z.M., "Near-field Radiative Heat Transfer Between Doped-Si Parallel Plates Separated by a Spacing down to 200 nm," Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, p. 203112 (2016).
- Zhao, B., and Zhang, Z.M., "Strong Plasmonic Coupling Between Graphene Ribbon Array and Metal Gratings," ACS Photonics, Vol. 2, pp. 1611-1618 (2015).
- Zhao, B., Zhao, J.M., and Zhang, Z.M., "Resonance Enhanced Absorption in a Graphene Monolayer by Using Deep Metal Gratings," Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Vol. 32, pp. 1176-1185 (2015). [PDF] [OSA Publishing Top Downloads in June 2015]
- Zhao, B., and Zhang, Z.M., "Study of Magnetic Polaritons in Deep Gratings for Thermal Emission Control," Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 135, pp. 81-89 (2014). [Best Poster Award at the 2013 IMECE]
- Zhao, B., Zhao, J.M., and Zhang, Z.M., "Enhancement of Near-Infrared Absorption in Graphene with Metal Gratings," Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 105, p. 031905-1/4 (2014). [ESI Highly Cited Paper]
- Zhao, B., Wang, L.P., Shuai, Y., and Zhang, Z.M., "Thermophotovoltaic Emitters Based on a Two-Dimensional Grating/Thin-Film Nanostructure," International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 67, pp. 637-645 (2013). [ESI Highly Cited Paper]
Patents
- Fan, S., Zhao, B., Assawaworrarit, S., Santhanam, P. and Orenstein, M., Leland Stanford Junior University, 2024. Apparatuses and methods involving DC voltage conversion using photonic transformers. U.S. Patent 11,923,873.
- Zhao, B. and Ghalekohneh, S.J., University of Houston System, 2023. Nonreciprocal solar thermophotovoltaics. U.S. Patent Application 18/120,497.