What is it about?
Radiative heat transfer can play an important role in nanoscale heat management and energy harvesting. We have shown for the first time that by exploiting a time-modulated photonic system, radiative heat flow can be actively enhanced, suppressed, eliminated, or reversed. Our theoretical formalism reveals a fundamental symmetry relation in the radiative heat transfer coefficients that underlies these novel effects.
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Why is it important?
We discover a novel route to obtain a multifunctional nanodevice that can perform as a radiative thermal diode with an infinite contrast ratio or as an efficient photonic refrigerator. Our findings indicate significant opportunities for using time-modulated systems to manage nanoscale radiative heat flow for various applications in energy technologies, such as thermophotovoltaics.
Perspectives
Controlling the radiative heat flow is important for numerous energy applications. This work presents the first study on how time modulation can impact the nanoscale radiative heat transfer and opens a novel direction in the field of radiative heat transfer.
Renwen Yu
Stanford University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Time-modulated near-field radiative heat transfer, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401514121.
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