Volume 1: Energy Innovations: Accelerated Deployment, New Concepts, and Emerging Technologies

Near-field radiative heat transfer enhanced by strongly-coupled surface polaritonic modes W. B. Zhang, B. X. Wang, C. Y. Zhao

Abstract

Surface polaritonic modes like surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and surface phonon polaritons (SPhPs) at interfaces can significantly enhance near-field radiative transfer between nanostructured surfaces. In this work, we study the near-field heat transfer between graphene/SiC composite nanostructures. It is demonstrated that thermally excited SPPs and SPhPs in such composite nanostructures lead to a significant enhancement in nearfield heat transfer rate. To further analyze the underlying mechanisms, we calculate energy transmission coefficients and obtain the near-field dispersion relations. The dispersion relations of composite nanostructures are substantially different from those of isolated graphene or SiC films, which are due to the strong coupling effects between different polaritonic modes. We further identify four pairs of strongly coupled polaritonic modes with considerable Rabi frequencies, which mainly contribute to the enhancement in near-field heat transfer. This work provides a route to utilize strongly coupled surface polaritonic modes to manipulate near-field heat transfer, which has potential applications in waste heat recovery and heat management.

Keywords near-field radiative transfer, strong coupling effect, frequency resonant mode, SPPs-SPhPs modes