Dynamic optical control of near-field radiative transfer
- Creators
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Kou, Junlong
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Minnich, Austin J.
Abstract
Dynamic control of radiative heat transfer is of fundamental interest as well as for applications in thermal management and energy conversion. However, realizing high contrast control of heat flow without moving parts and with high temporal frequencies remains a challenge. Here, we propose a thermal modulation scheme based on optical pumping of semiconductors in near-field radiative contact. External photo-excitation of the semiconductor emitters leads to increases in the free carrier concentration that in turn alters the plasma frequency, resulting in modulation of near-field thermal radiation. The temporal frequency of the modulation can reach hundreds of kHz limited only by the recombination lifetime, greatly exceeding the bandwidth of methods based on temperature modulcation. Calculations based on fluctuational electrodynamics show that the heat transfer coefficient between two silicon films can be tuned from near zero to 600 Wm^(−2)K^(−1) with a gap distance of 100 nm at room temperature.
Additional Information
© 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement. Received 26 Mar 2018; revised 4 Jun 2018; accepted 5 Jun 2018; published 24 Jul 2018. Funding: US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DE-SC0001293).Attached Files
Published - oe-26-18-A729.pdf
Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 89581
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180912-135435405
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0001293
- Created
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2018-09-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field