Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer Between Graphene/Silicon Carbide Multilayers

Hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) alternately stacked by graphene and silicon carbide (SiC) is proposed to theoretically study near-field radiative heat transfer. Heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) are calculated using the effective medium theory (EMT). We observe that HMMs can exhibit better heat transfer characteristic than graphene-covered SiC bulks when appropriate SiC thickness and chemical potentials of graphene are selected. Transfer matrix method (TMM) is also employed to calculate HTC between HMMs with thicker SiC, given the invalidity of EMT in this case. We deduce that with increasing SiC thickness, HTC first increases rapidly and then decreases slowly when it reaches maximum value. HTC is high for graphene with small chemical potential. Results may benefit applications of thermophotovoltaic devices.