No Arabic abstract
The radiative heat transfer between two dielectrics can be strongly enhanced in the near field in the presence of surface phonon-polariton resonances. Nevertheless, the spectral mismatch between the surface modes supported by two dissimilar materials is responsible for a dramatic reduction of the radiative heat flux they exchange. In the present paper we study how the presence of a graphene sheet, deposited on the material supporting the surface wave of lowest frequency, allows to widely tune the radiative heat transfer, producing an amplification factor going up to one order of magnitude. By analyzing the Landauer energy transmission coefficients we demonstrate that this amplification results from the interplay between the delocalized plasmon supported by graphene and the surface polaritons of the two dielectrics. We finally show that the effect we highlight is robust with respect to the frequency mismatch, paving the way to an active tuning and amplification of near-field radiative heat transfer in different configurations.
Near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) is strongly related with many applications such as near-field imaging, thermos-photovoltaics and thermal circuit devices. The active control of NFRHT is of great interest since it provides a degree of tunability by external means. In this work, a magnetically tunable multi-band NFRHT is revealed in a system of two suspended graphene sheets at room temperature. It is found that the single-band spectra for B=0 split into multi-band spectra under an external magnetic field. Dual-band spectra can be realized for a modest magnetic field (e.g., B=4 T). One band is determined by intra-band transitions in the classical regime, which undergoes a blue shift as the chemical potential increases. Meanwhile, the other band is contributed by inter-Landau-level transitions in the quantum regime, which is robust against the change of chemical potentials. For a strong magnetic field (e.g., B=15 T), there is an additional band with the resonant peak appearing at near-zero frequency (microwave regime), stemming from the magneto-plasmon zero modes. The great enhancement of NFRHT at such low frequency has not been found in any previous systems yet. This work may pave a way for multi-band thermal information transfer based on atomically thin graphene sheets.
In this Rapid Communication, we theoretically demonstrate that near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) can be modulated and enhanced by a new energy transmission mode of evanescent wave, i.e. the nonreciprocal surface plasmons polaritons (NSPPs). In addition to the well-known coupled surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), applying a drift current on a graphene sheet leads to an extremely asymmetric photonic transmission model, which has never been noted in the noncontact heat exchanges at nanoscale before. The coupling of plasmons in the infrared bands dominates the NFRHT, associated with low loss (high loss and ultrahigh confinement) traveling along (against) the current. The dependence of NSPPs on the drift-current velocity as well as the vacuum gap is analyzed. It is found that the coupling of NSPPs at smaller and larger gap sizes exhibits different nonreciprocities. Finally, we also demonstrate that the prominent influence of the drift current on the radiative heat flux is found at a low chemical potential. These findings will open a new way to spectrally control NFRHT, which holds great potential for improving the performance of energy systems like near-field thermophotovoltaics and thermal modulator.
We show that the radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles can be significantly amplified when they are placed in proximity of a planar substrate supporting a surface resonance. The amplification factor goes beyond two orders of magnitude in the case of dielectric nanoparticles, whereas it is lower in the case of metallic nanoparticles. We analyze how this effect depends on the frequency and on the particles-surface distance, by clearly identifying the signature of the surface mode producing the amplification. Finally, we show how the presence of a graphene sheet on top of the substrate can modify the effect, by making an amplification of two orders of magnitude possible also in the case of metallic nanoparticles. This long range amplification effect should play an important role in the thermal relaxation dynamics of nanoparticle networks.
We study the interplay of conductive and radiative heat transfer (RHT) in planar geometries and predict that temperature gradients induced by radiation can play a significant role on the behavior of RHT with respect to gap sizes, depending largely on geometric and material parameters and not so crucially on operating temperatures. Our findings exploit rigorous calculations based on a closed-form expression for the heat flux between two plates separated by vacuum gaps $d$ and subject to arbitrary temperature profiles, along with an approximate but accurate analytical treatment of coupled conduction--radiation in this geometry. We find that these effects can be prominent in typical materials (e.g. silica and sapphire) at separations of tens of nanometers, and can play an even larger role in metal oxides, which exhibit moderate conductivities and enhanced radiative properties. Broadly speaking, these predictions suggest that the impact of RHT on thermal conduction, and vice versa, could manifest itself as a limit on the possible magnitude of RHT at the nanoscale, which asymptotes to a constant (the conductive transfer rate when the gap is closed) instead of diverging at short separations.
In this work, we study the near-field radiative heat transfer between two suspended sheets of anisotropic 2D materials. It is found that the radiative heat transfer can be enhanced with orders-of-magnitude over the blackbody limit for nanoscale separation. The enhancement is attributed to the excitation of anisotropic and hyperbolic plasmonic modes. Meanwhile, a large thermal modulation effect, depending on the twisted angle of principal axes between the upper and bottom sheets of anisotropic 2D materials, is revealed. The near-field radiative heat transfer for different concentrations of electron is demonstrated and the role of hyperbolic plasmonic modes is analyzed. Our finding of radiative heat transfer between anisotropic 2D materials may find promising applications in thermal nano-devices, such as non-contact thermal modulators, thermal lithography, thermos-photovoltaics, etc.