Radiative heat transfer between two dielectric-filled metal gratings

Nanoscale surface corrugation is known to be able to drastically enhance radiative heat transfer between two metal plates. Here we numerically calculate the radiative heat transfer between two dielectric-filled metal gratings at dissimilar temperatures based on a scattering approach. It is demonstrated that, compared to unfilled metal gratings, the heat flux for a fixed geometry can be further enhanced, by up to 650% for the geometry separated by a vacuum gap of g = 1 mu m and temperature values concerned in our study. The enhancement in radiative heat transfer is found to depend on refractive index of the filling dielectric, the specific grating temperatures, and naturally the gap size between the two gratings. The enhancement can be understood through examining the transmission factor spectra, especially the spectral locations of the spoof surface plasmon polariton modes. Of more practical importance, it's shown that the radiative heat flux can exceed that between two planar SiC plates with same thickness, separation, and temperature settings over a wide temperature range. This reaffirms that one can harness rich electromagnetic modal properties in nanostructured materials for efficient thermal management at nanoscale.