Tunable narrow-band near-field thermal emitters based on resonant metamaterials

Abstract

In the near field, Planck's law of blackbody radiation breaks down, and radiative heat transfer can be enhanced by orders of magnitude when surface polaritons are supported by interacting materials. However, such thermal radiation enhancement is strongly material dependent, thus difficult to control. Here, we propose a metamaterial-based structure consisting of patterned doped silicon nanorods that exhibits tunable narrow-band thermal emission. Direct numerical simulation based on the Wiener chaos expansion (WCE) method is performed to accurately investigate the heat transfer mechanism of metamaterials in the near field. The fundamental principle of the WCE method is elucidated, and an algorithm for symmetric and periodic structures is discussed. Implementation of the WCE method with the finite-difference time-domain method using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA) is also addressed in this paper.