Enhancement and saturation of near-field radiative heat transfer in nanogaps between metallic surfaces

Near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) between planar metallic surfaces was computationally explored over five decades ago by Polder and van Hove [Phys. Rev. B 4, 3303 (1971)]. These studies predicted that, as the gap size (d) between the surfaces decreased, the radiative heat flux first increas...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Rincón García, Laura, Thompson, Dakotah, Mittapally, Rohith, Agrait de la Puente, Mario Nicolás, Meyhofer, Edgar, Reddy, Pramod
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/706261
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/706261
https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.145901
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Electrodynamics
Heat Transfer
Metals
Radiative Transfer
Surface Measurement
Física
Descripción
Sumario:Near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) between planar metallic surfaces was computationally explored over five decades ago by Polder and van Hove [Phys. Rev. B 4, 3303 (1971)]. These studies predicted that, as the gap size (d) between the surfaces decreased, the radiative heat flux first increases by several orders of magnitude until d is ∼ 100 nm after which the heat flux saturates. However, despite both the fundamental and practical importance of these predictions, the combined enhancement and saturation of NFRHT at small gaps in metallic surfaces remains experimentally unverified. Here, we probe NFRHT between planar metallic (Pt, Au) surfaces and show that RHT rates can exceed the far-field rate by over a thousand times when d is reduced to ∼ 25 nm. More importantly, we show that for small values of d RHT saturates due to the dominant contributions from transverse electric evanescent modes. Our results are in excellent agreement with the predictions of fluctuational electrodynamics and are expected to inform the development of technologies such as near-field thermophotovoltaics, radiative heat-assisted magnetic recording, and nanolithography