Near-field radiative heat transfer with doped-silicon nanostructured metamaterials

The objective of this work is to evaluate different practically achievable doped-silicon (D-Si) nanostructured metamaterials (including nanowires and nanoholes, multilayers, and one-dimensional gratings) in terms of their potential for enhancing near-field radiative heat transfer at ambient temperature. It is found that both doped silicon nanowires and nanoholes may achieve an enhancement over bulk doped silicon by more than one order of magnitude in the deep submicron gap region. The enhancement is attributed to either the broadband hyperbolic modes or low-loss surface modes or a combination of both. On the other hand, polarization coupling, which can occur in the grating configuration, contributes little to the radiative transfer at the nanometer scale. This work will facilitate the application of nanostructures in more efficient non-contact thermal management, thermal imaging, and near-field thermophotovoltaics. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.