Review of near-field thermal radiation and its application to energy conversion

Basu, Soumyadipta; Zhang, Z. M.; Fu, Ceji

doi:10.1002/er.1607

Cited by 436 publications

(382 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…As one of the fundamental modes of heat transfer, radiative heat transfer plays an important role in a wide spectrum of applications from energy harvesting to thermal management [1][2][3][4][5]. In the far field, the maximum radiative heat transfer rate between two objects is restricted by the black-body limit.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Near-field heat transfer between graphene/hBN multilayers

et al. 2017

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We study the radiative heat transfer between multilayer structures made by a periodic repetition of a graphene sheet and a hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) slab. Surface plasmons in a monolayer graphene can couple with a hyperbolic phonon polaritons in a single hBN film to form hybrid polaritons that can assist photon tunneling. For periodic multilayer graphene/hBN structures, the stacked metallic/dielectric array can give rise to a further effective hyperbolic behavior, in addition to the intrinsic natural hyperbolic behavior of hBN. The effective hyperbolicity can enable more hyperbolic polaritons that enhance the photon tunneling and hence the near-field heat transfer. However, the hybrid polaritons on the surface, i.e. surface plasmon-phonon polaritons, dominate the near-field heat transfer between multilayer structures when the topmost layer is graphene. The effective hyperbolic regions can be well predicted by the effective medium theory (EMT), thought EMT fails to capture the hybrid surface polaritons and results in a heat transfer rate much lower compared to the exact calculation. The chemical potential of the graphene sheets can be tuned through electrical gating and results in an additional modulation of the heat transfer. We found that the near-field heat transfer between multilayer structure does not increase monotonously with the number of layer in the stack, which provides a way to control the heat transfer rate by the number of graphene layers in the multilayer structure. The results may benefit the applications of near-field energy harvesting and radiative cooling based on hybrid polaritons in two-dimensional materials.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Near-field heat transfer between graphene/hBN multilayers

et al. 2017

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“…Recent reviews can be found in Refs. [15][16][17][18].The first attempts to measure a heat flux between metallic surfaces at room temperature and micrometric distances have proved to be inconclusive [19,20]. Experiments in the nanometric regime have clearly demonstrated the transfer enhancement [21,22].…”

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confidence: 99%

Mesoscopic Description of Radiative Heat Transfer at the Nanoscale

2010

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We present a formulation of the nanoscale radiative heat transfer (RHT) using concepts of mesoscopic physics. We introduce the analog of the Sharvin conductance using the quantum of thermal conductance. The formalism provides a convenient framework to analyse the physics of RHT at the nanoscale. Finally, we propose a RHT experiment in the regime of quantized conductance.PACS numbers: 44.40.+a;73.23.-b It has been discovered in the late sixties that the RHT between two metallic parallel plates can be larger than predicted using the blackbody radiation form [1][2][3]. It is now known that this anomalous RHT is due to the contribution of evanescent waves and becomes significant when the distance separating the interfaces becomes smaller than the thermal wavelength λ th = c kBT where is Planck's constant, k B is Boltzmann's constant, c is the light velocity and T is the temperature. Using the framework of fluctuational electrodynamics [4], Polder and van Hove (PvH) were able to derive a general form of the RHT accounting for the optical properties of the media [5]. Since this seminal contribution, several reports have been published in the literature [6][7][8][9][10][11]. A quantum-mechanical derivation [12] has confirmed these results obtained within the framework of fluctuational electrodynamics. While the first papers considered metals, it has been realized that the RHT at the nanoscale can be further enhanced for dielectrics due to the contribution of surface phonon polaritons [13,14]. Recent reviews can be found in Refs. [15][16][17][18].The first attempts to measure a heat flux between metallic surfaces at room temperature and micrometric distances have proved to be inconclusive [19,20]. Experiments in the nanometric regime have clearly demonstrated the transfer enhancement [21,22]. Yet the lack of good control of the tip geometry did not allow quantitative comparison with theory. More recent experiments [23,24] are performed using silica taking advantage of the flux enhancement due to the resonant contribution of surface phonon polaritons. A good agreement between PvH theory and experiments has been reported [24].The purpose of this paper is to establish a link between the PvH form of the radiative heat flux and the formalism of transport in mesoscopic physics. It will help to develop a more physical understanding of the RHT at the nanoscale, which also clarifies how losses and non-local effects determine the maximal achievable heat flux [10]. Finally, we will show that this reformulation raises the prospect of observing quantized conductance for systems with sizes on the order of the thermal wavelength λ th .We start our discussion with the PvH form of the RHT. We consider a vacuum gap with width d separating two homogeneous half spaces labeled medium 1 and 2 [see Fig. 1 a)]. Then, the heat flux is [5,16] ( 1) where κ = (k x , k y ) and γ = k 2 0 − κ 2 are the parallel and normal wave vector, Θ(ω,is the mean energy of a harmonic oscillator, k 0 = ω/c, r 1,2 j are the usual Fresnel factors for s-or p-polar...

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“…The near-field radiative heat flux between two semi-infinite homogeneous media at temperatures of T 1 and T 2 (T 1 > T 2 ) can be calculated with fluctuational electrodynamics by [9]:…”

Section: Incorporated With Uniaxial Wave Propagationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, the near-field enhancement could be orders of magnitude with the excitation of surface plasmon/phonon polaritons (SPP/SPhP) across the nanometer vacuum gaps [8][9][10][11]; however, it usually requires identical or similar materials for the emitter and receiver to achieve the best coupling effect and thereby maximum heat flux enhancement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced energy transfer by near-field coupling of a nanostructured metamaterial with a graphene-covered plate

Chang

Yang

Wang

2016

Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer

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Coupled surface plasmon/phonon polaritons and hyperbolic modes are known to enhance radiative transport across nanometer vacuum gaps but usually require identical materials. It becomes crucial to achieve strong near-field energy transfer between dissimilar materials for applications like near-field thermophotovoltaic and thermal rectification. In this work, we theoretically demonstrate extraordinary near-field radiative transport between a nanostructured metamaterial emitter and a graphene-covered planar receiver. Strong near-field coupling with two orders of magnitude enhancement in the spectral heat flux is achieved at the gap distance of 20 nm. By carefully selecting the graphene chemical potential and doping levels of silicon nanohole emitter and silicon plate receiver, the total near-field radiative heat flux can reach about 500 times higher than the far-field blackbody limit between 400 K and 300 K. The physical mechanisms are elucidated by the near-field surface plasmon coupling with fluctuational electrodynamics and dispersion relations. The effects of graphene chemical potential, emitter and receiver doping levels, and vacuum gap distance on the near-field coupling and radiative transfer are analyzed in detail.

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Review of near-field thermal radiation and its application to energy conversion

Cited by 436 publications

References 62 publications

Near-field heat transfer between graphene/hBN multilayers

Near-field heat transfer between graphene/hBN multilayers

Mesoscopic Description of Radiative Heat Transfer at the Nanoscale

Enhanced energy transfer by near-field coupling of a nanostructured metamaterial with a graphene-covered plate

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