Metamaterial enhanced near-field thermophotovoltaic energy conversion

It is well known that radiative heat transfer rate can exceed that between two blackbodies by several orders of magnitude due to the coupling of evanescent waves. One promising application of near-field thermal radiation is thermophotovoltaic (TPV) devices, which convert thermal energy to electricity. Recently, different types of metamaterials with excitations of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs)/surface phonon polaritons (SPhPs), magnetic polaritons (MP), and hyperbolic modes (HM), have been studied to further improve near-field radiative heat flux and conversion efficiency. On the other hand, near-field experimental demonstration between planar surfaces has been limited due to the extreme challenge in the vacuum gap control as well as the parallelism.

The main objective of this work is to experimentally study the near-field radiative transfer and the excitation of resonance modes by designing nanostructured thin films separated by nanometer vacuum gaps. In particular, the near-field radiative heat transfer between two parallel plates of intrinsic silicon wafers coated with a thin film of aluminum nanostructure is investigated. In addition, theoretical studies about the effects of different physical mechanisms such as SPhP/SPP, MPs, and HM on near-field radiative transfer in various nanostructured metamaterials are conducted particularly for near-field TPV applications. Numerical simulations are performed by using multilayer transfer matrix method, rigorous coupled wave analysis, and finite difference time domain techniques incorporated with fluctuational electrodynamics. The understanding gained here will undoubtedly benefit the spectral control of near-field thermal radiation for energy-harvesting applications like thermophotovoltaic energy conversion and radiation-based thermal management.