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  • Review Article
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Nanophotonic engineering of far-field thermal emitters

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 920–930 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Thermal emission is a ubiquitous and fundamental process by which all objects at non-zero temperatures radiate electromagnetic energy. This process is often assumed to be incoherent in both space and time, resulting in broadband, omnidirectional light emission toward the far field, with a spectral density related to the emitter temperature by Planck’s law. Over the past two decades, there has been considerable progress in engineering the spectrum, directionality, polarization and temporal response of thermally emitted light using nanostructured materials. This Review summarizes the basic physics of thermal emission, lays out various nanophotonic approaches to engineer thermal emission in the far field, and highlights several applications, including energy harvesting, lighting and radiative cooling.

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Fig. 1: Physics of thermal emission.
Fig. 2: Narrowband and directive thermal emission from nanophotonic systems.
Fig. 3: Dynamic modulation of thermal emission.
Fig. 4: TE control for energy conversion and lighting.
Fig. 5: Radiative cooling.

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Acknowledgements

M.A.K. acknowledges financial support from the NSF (ECCS-1750341) and ONR (N00014-16-1-2556). A.K. and A.A. acknowledge support from the AFOSR (MURI grant no. FA9550-17-1-0002), the Department of Defense, the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation. D.G.B. acknowledges support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. We acknowledge S. Noda for sending data for our figures, and A. Lenert for helpful discussions.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Denis G. Baranov, Yuzhe Xiao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Denis G. Baranov

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Yuzhe Xiao & Mikhail A. Kats

  3. Dukhov Research Institute of Automatics, Moscow, Russia

    Igor A. Nechepurenko

  4. Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Alex Krasnok & Andrea Alù

  5. Physics Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

  6. Department of Electrical Engineering, City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Mikhail A. Kats

  8. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Mikhail A. Kats

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  1. Denis G. Baranov
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Correspondence to Mikhail A. Kats.

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Baranov, D.G., Xiao, Y., Nechepurenko, I.A. et al. Nanophotonic engineering of far-field thermal emitters. Nat. Mater. 18, 920–930 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0363-y

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