Research and Development of Numerical Methods of Multiphysics and Multiscale Modeling for Emerging Technology Applications and Designs

Artificial intelligence, energy & power systems, internet-of-things (IoT), 5G communications, and materials have emerged as the technology areas that will bring significant changes and impacts on how we work and live in the future. They all encompass novel electronic and electrical circuits and systems for a wide range of applications, from unmanned vehicles to personal health monitoring systems, from wireless power harvesting and transfer to imaging and sensing. The range of operating frequencies has been extended from a low frequency of a few Hertz to terahertz/optical frequency and spatial dimensions of different parts of a component or a system vary from nanometers to tens of meters. These applications have made or will make designs and optimizations of electrical and electronic circuits and systems very challenging: since circuits and systems are required to be of low cost and small size with powerful functionality, not only electromagnetic effects (e.g. field distributions, propagation) but also Multiphysics phenomena (e.g. thermal, force, tongue, plasmonics, quantum) must be considered in design and optimization. They demand for efficient and effective simulation methods to (i) develop new engineered materials, novel components, (ii) shortening design cycles and (iii) increase competitiveness.

Our recent work on numerical methods for simulating electromagnetic structures has presented the opportunity and foundation for advancing and expanding the areas of the above-mentioned Multiphysics and multiscale modeling. Based on these methods, we will develop a new generalized method for modeling electromagnetics-coupled thermal, force, photonic, plasmonic, quantum and other physical phenomena, and form a computational platform that unifies most numerical methods for Multiphysics and multiscale modeling including stochastic characterizations. We will expand our modeling theory and develop associated software for Multiphysics and multiscale modeling of electronic and electrical components and systems. We will expand and incorporate our recent work on analytical solutions and eigen-decompositions of time-domain numerical methods and the time reversal least-square technique into the unifying computational method. We will then apply it to model, design and optimize emerging components and systems of wireless power transfer for electronics and automobile charging, mm-wave components and systems for 5G communications, nano- and terahertz/optical imaging devices and systems for detection of biological tissues and chemical agents (e.g. explosives and DNA). The end results of this research program are expected to be not only the computational methods and software packages for Multiphysics and multiscale modeling but also new electrical components, circuits and systems applicable to emerging technology areas.