Near Field Heat Transfer between Random Composite Materials: Applications and Limitations

We present a theoretical study of the limits and bounds of using effective medium approximations in the calculation of the near field radiative heat transfer between a composite system made of Au nanoparticles in a SiC host and an homogeneous SiC slab. The effective dielectric function of the composite slab is calculated using three different approximations: Maxwell-Garnett, Bruggeman, and Looyenga's. In addition, we considered an empirical fit to the effective dielectric function by Grundquist and Hunderi. We show that the calculated value of the heat flux in the near field is dependent on the model, and the difference in the effective dielectric function is larger around the plasmonic response of the Au nanoparticles. This, in turn, accounts for the difference in the near field radiative heat flux. For all values of filling fractions, the Looyenga approximation gives a lower bound for the heat flux.