Abdullah El-Rifai
PhD student
Email
abdullah.el-rifaiobfuscate@ed.ac.uk
Biography

I am a second year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. I obtained my MEng in mechanical engineering from the The University of Edinburgh in 2020, where I used molecular dynamics to study the effect of solid-liquid wettability and heat-flux magnitude on the evaporative cooling capabilities of nanoporous membranes.

In my PhD, my research focuses on heat transfer across solid-liquid interfaces, aiming to understand the origin of the nanoscale thermal resistances present at such interfaces, and elucidating the role of surface geometry and chemistry in minimising these interfacial thermal resistances (ITR).

The importance of minimising ITR becomes increasingly apparent in the context of state-of-the-art two-phase cooling devices (e.g. nanoporous membrane-driven cooling devices) currently being proposed to dissipate sufficient heat from high heat-flux devices, such as GaN power amplifiers. In these cooling devices, the solid-liquid interfacial thermal resistances present are comparable to the bulk thermal resistances of the materials comprising the device; as such, minimising the interfacial thermal resistances found could prove to be a viable route to optimise the performance of these two-phase cooling devices.