Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Radiative heat conductances between dielectric and metallic parallel plates with nanoscale gaps

Nature Nanotechnology volume 11, pages 509–514 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Recent experiments1,2,3,4 have demonstrated that radiative heat transfer between objects separated by nanometre-scale gaps considerably exceeds the predictions of far-field radiation theories5. Exploiting this near-field enhancement is of great interest for emerging technologies such as near-field thermophotovoltaics and nano-lithography6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 because of the expected increases in efficiency, power conversion or resolution in these applications7,11. Past measurements, however, were performed using tip-plate or sphere-plate configurations and failed to realize the orders of magnitude increases in radiative heat currents predicted from near-field radiative heat transfer theory9,14. Here, we report 100- to 1,000-fold enhancements (at room temperature) in the radiative conductance between parallel-planar surfaces at gap sizes below 100 nm, in agreement with the predictions of near-field theories9,14. Our measurements were performed in vacuum gaps between prototypical materials (SiO2–SiO2, Au–Au, SiO2–Au and Au–Si) using two microdevices and a custom-built nanopositioning platform15, which allows precise control over a broad range of gap sizes (from <100 nm to 10 μm). Our experimental set-up will enable systematic studies of a variety of near-field-based thermal phenomena16,17,18, with important implications for thermophotovoltaic applications7,19,20, that have been predicted but have defied experimental verification.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Microdevices for probing near-field radiation between parallel-planar surfaces.
Figure 2: Measurement of near-field radiative heat transfer between parallel-planar surfaces.
Figure 3: Optimization of parallelization and demonstration of enhanced heat conductances in sub-100 nm gaps between SiO2 surfaces.
Figure 4: Enhanced heat conductances in <100 nm gaps of Au surfaces and near-field radiation between dissimilar surfaces.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Rousseau, E. et al. Radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale. Nature Photon. 3, 514–517 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Shen, S., Narayanaswamy, A. & Chen, G. Surface phonon polaritons mediated energy transfer between nanoscale gaps. Nano Lett. 9, 2909–2913 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Song, B. et al. Enhancement of near-field radiative heat transfer using polar dielectric thin films. Nature Nanotech. 10, 253–258 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Kim, K. et al. Radiative heat transfer in the extreme near-field. Nature 528, 387–391 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Planck, M. The Theory of Heat Radiation (P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 1914).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Basu, S., Chen, Y. B. & Zhang, Z. M. Microscale radiation in thermophotovoltaic devices—a review. Int. J. Energ. Res. 31, 689–716 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, K. F., Santhanam, P. & Fan, S. H. Suppressing sub-bandgap phonon–polariton heat transfer in near-field thermophotovoltaic devices for waste heat recovery. Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 091106 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. DiMatteo, R. S. et al. Enhanced photogeneration of carriers in a semiconductor via coupling across a nonisothermal nanoscale vacuum gap. Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 1894–1896 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Joulain, K., Mulet, J. P., Marquier, F., Carminati, R. & Greffet, J. J. Surface electromagnetic waves thermally excited: radiative heat transfer, coherence properties and Casimir forces revisited in the near field. Surf. Sci. Rep. 57, 59–112 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Laroche, M., Carminati, R. & Greffet, J. J. Near-field thermophotovoltaic energy conversion. J. Appl. Phys. 100, 063704 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Pendry, J. B. Radiative exchange of heat between nanostructures. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 11, 6621–6633 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Song, B., Fiorino, A., Meyhofer, E. & Reddy, P. Near-field radiative thermal transport: from theory to experiment. AIP Adv. 5, 053503 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Tong, J. K., Hsu, W. C., Huang, Y., Boriskina, S. V. & Chen, G. Thin-film ‘thermal well’ emitters and absorbers for high-efficiency thermophotovoltaics. Sci. Rep. 5, 10661 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Polder, D. & van Hove, M. A. Theory of radiative heat transfer between closely spaced bodies. Phys. Rev. B 4, 3303–3314 (1971).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Ganjeh, Y. et al. A platform to parallelize planar surfaces and control their spatial separation with nanometer resolution. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 105101 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Ben-Abdallah, P. & Biehs, S. A. Near-field thermal transistor. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 044301 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Moncada-Villa, E., Fernandez-Hurtado, V., Garcia-Vidal, F. J., Garcia-Martin, A. & Cuevas, J. C. Magnetic field control of near-field radiative heat transfer and the realization of highly tunable hyperbolic thermal emitters. Phys. Rev. B 92, 125418 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Otey, C. R., Lau, W. T. & Fan, S. H. Thermal rectification through vacuum. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 154301 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Messina, R. & Ben-Abdallah, P. Graphene-based photovoltaic cells for near-field thermal energy conversion. Sci. Rep. 3, 1383 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Molesky, S. & Jacob, Z. Ideal near-field thermophotovoltaic cells. Phys. Rev. B 91, 205435 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Cravalho, E. G., Domoto, G. A. & Tien, C. L. Measurements of thermal radiation of solids at liquid-helium temperatures. In 3rd Thermophysics Conference 68–774 (AIAA, 1968).

  22. Hargreaves, C. M. Anomalous radiative transfer between closely-spaced bodies. Phys. Lett. A 30, 491–492 (1969).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Ottens, R. S. et al. Near-field radiative heat transfer between macroscopic planar surfaces. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 014301 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Lim, M., Lee, S. S. & Lee, B. J. Near-field thermal radiation between doped silicon plates at nanoscale gaps. Phys. Rev. B 91, 1915136 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  25. St-Gelais, R., Guha, B., Zhu, L. X., Fan, S. H. & Lipson, M. Demonstration of strong near-field radiative heat transfer between integrated nanostructures. Nano Lett. 14, 6971–6975 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Biehs, S. A., Rousseau, E. & Greffet, J. J. Mesoscopic description of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 234301 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Narayanaswamy, A. & Zheng, Y. A Green's function formalism of energy and momentum transfer in fluctuational electrodynamics. J. Quant. Spectr. Rad. Transfer 132, 12–21 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Modest, M. F. Radiative Heat Transfer (Academic, 2013).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  29. Mulet, J. P., Joulain, K., Carminati, R. & Greffet, J. J. Enhanced radiative heat transfer at nanometric distances. Microscale Therm. Eng. 6, 209–222 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Chapuis, P. O., Volz, S., Henkel, C., Joulain, K. & Greffet, J. J. Effects of spatial dispersion in near-field radiative heat transfer between two parallel metallic surfaces. Phys. Rev. B 77, 035431 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

P.R. and E.M. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (award nos. CBET 1235691 and CBET 1509691; nanopositioning platform). P.R. acknowledges support from DOE–BES through a grant from the Scanning Probe Microscopy Division (award no. DE-SC0004871; instrumentation). The authors thank J.C. Cuevas for discussions, and acknowledge the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility (LNF) for facilitating the nanofabrication of devices.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Bai Song and Dakotah Thompson: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Bai Song, Dakotah Thompson, Anthony Fiorino, Yashar Ganjeh, Pramod Reddy & Edgar Meyhofer

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Pramod Reddy

Authors
  1. Bai Song
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Dakotah Thompson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Anthony Fiorino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yashar Ganjeh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Pramod Reddy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Edgar Meyhofer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

This work was conceived by P.R. and E.M. The near-field conductance data were obtained by B.S., Y.G. and A.F. under the supervision of E.M and P.R. The devices were designed and fabricated by D.T. and B.S. Modelling was performed by A.F. and B.S. The manuscript was written by P.R. and E.M. with comments and inputs from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Pramod Reddy or Edgar Meyhofer.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 1364 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Song, B., Thompson, D., Fiorino, A. et al. Radiative heat conductances between dielectric and metallic parallel plates with nanoscale gaps. Nature Nanotech 11, 509–514 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.17

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.17

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing