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Thermal emission

Ultrafast dynamic control

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 920–921 (2014)Cite this article

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Control of thermal emission with microsecond switching times has been achieved by using sub-band transitions in composite quantum-well and photonic-crystal structures.

The most familiar example of a thermal emitter is the Sun. Because of the thermal motion of charged particles, its 5,800-K hot surface most strongly emits radiation in the green (at a wavelength around 500 nm). More generally, the relationship between temperature of a black body and wavelength of emission is captured by Wien's displacement law: the peak wavelength of emitted light is inversely proportional to a black body's absolute temperature. Hence, peaks of emission of hotter stars are shifted towards the blue, and those of colder stars towards the red. Thermal emission can also be controlled in the absence of a temperature change by incorporating periodic features with length scales comparable to the wavelength of thermally emitted light1,2,3. Writing in Nature Materials, Susumu Noda and colleagues have now pushed this concept a step further. They developed a composite structure that combines photonic crystals and quantum wells, allowing for dynamic control of thermal emission at speeds that are more than four orders of magnitude faster than conventional means of temperature modulation4.

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Figure 1: Structures for the control of thermal emission and emissivity spectra.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ognjen Ilic and Marin Soljačić are at the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Ognjen Ilic & Marin Soljačić

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  1. Ognjen Ilic
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  2. Marin Soljačić
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Correspondence to Ognjen Ilic or Marin Soljačić.

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Ilic, O., Soljačić, M. Ultrafast dynamic control. Nature Mater 13, 920–921 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4085

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