Near-field radiative heat transfer between doped-Si parallel plates separated by a spacing down to 200  nm

Heat transfer between two objects separated by a nanoscale vacuum gap holds great promise especially in energy harvesting applications such as near-field thermophotovoltaic systems. However, experimental validation of nanoscale radiative heat transfer has been largely limited to tip-plate configurations due to challenges of maintaining small gap spacing over a relatively large area. Here, we reportmeasurements of heat transfer near roomtemperature between two 1  cm by 1 cmdoped-Si parallel plates, separated by a vacuum gap from about 200  nm to 780 nm. Themeasured strong near-field radiative transfer is in quantitative agreement with the theoretical prediction based on fluctuational electrodynamics. The largestmeasured radiative heat flux is 11 times as high as the blackbody limit for the same hot and cold surfacetemperatures. Our experiments have produced the highest radiative heat transfer rate observed to date across submicron distances between objects near roomtemperature.

Source: Applied Physics Letters - November 15, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Jesse I. Watjen, Bo Zhao and Zhuomin M. Zhang Source Type: research