With their chemical stability under high temperatures, dielectric materials can be idealized thermal emitters for different energy applications. However, dielectric materials do not support surface waves at near-infrared ranges for longer-distance thermal photon tunneling, which limits their applications in near-field thermal radiation. It is demonstrated in this study that thermal field amplification at near-infrared wavelengths at dielectric surfaces could be achieved through asymmetric Fabrey-Perot resonance with anti-reflection coatings or 1D photonic crystal type structures. ≥100 nm level near-infrared thermal photon tunneling can be achieved with these approaches. Among these two approaches, 1D photonic crystal type periodic structure constructed with the same high refractive index material as the emitter/collector material allows near-field thermal photon tunneling at very large parallel wavenumbers. Moreover, the field amplification can be increased by adding more 1D photonic crystal layers to achieve even longer distances near field thermal photon tunneling.
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