TY - JOUR
T1 - Electrically-controlled near-field radiative thermal modulator made of graphene-coated silicon carbide plates
AU - Yang, Yue
AU - Wang, Liping
N1 - Funding Information:
YY and LW are grateful to the supports from the National Science Foundation (CBET-1454698) and ASU New Faculty Startup fund. YY would like to thank the partial support from the University Graduate Fellowship offered by the ASU Fulton Schools of Engineering.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2017/8
Y1 - 2017/8
N2 - In this work, we propose a hybrid near-field radiative thermal modulator made of two graphene-covered silicon carbide (SiC) plates separated by a nanometer vacuum gap. The near-field photon tunneling between the emitter and receiver is modulated by changing graphene chemical potentials with symmetrically or asymmetrically applied voltage biases. The radiative heat flux calculated from fluctuational electrodynamics significantly varies with graphene chemical potentials due to tunable near-field coupling strength between graphene plasmons across the vacuum gap. Thermal modulation and switching, which are the key functionalities required for a thermal modulator, are theoretically realized and analyzed. Newly introduced quantities of the modulation factor, the sensitivity factor and switching factor are studied quite extensively in a large parameter range for both graphene chemical potential and vacuum gap distance. This opto-electronic device with faster operating mode, which is in principle only limited by electronics and not by the thermal inertia, will facilitate the practical application of active thermal management, thermal circuits, and thermal computing with photon-based near-field thermal transport.
AB - In this work, we propose a hybrid near-field radiative thermal modulator made of two graphene-covered silicon carbide (SiC) plates separated by a nanometer vacuum gap. The near-field photon tunneling between the emitter and receiver is modulated by changing graphene chemical potentials with symmetrically or asymmetrically applied voltage biases. The radiative heat flux calculated from fluctuational electrodynamics significantly varies with graphene chemical potentials due to tunable near-field coupling strength between graphene plasmons across the vacuum gap. Thermal modulation and switching, which are the key functionalities required for a thermal modulator, are theoretically realized and analyzed. Newly introduced quantities of the modulation factor, the sensitivity factor and switching factor are studied quite extensively in a large parameter range for both graphene chemical potential and vacuum gap distance. This opto-electronic device with faster operating mode, which is in principle only limited by electronics and not by the thermal inertia, will facilitate the practical application of active thermal management, thermal circuits, and thermal computing with photon-based near-field thermal transport.
KW - Graphene
KW - Near-field radiation
KW - Surface plasmon polariton
KW - Thermal modulator
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.06.013
DO - 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.06.013
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84977554163
SN - 0022-4073
VL - 197
SP - 68
EP - 75
JO - Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer
JF - Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer
ER -