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Nonreciprocal thermal photonics

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Thermal nanophotonics has undergone a revolution in recent decades, benefiting from in-depth studies in nano-optics and breakthroughs in nanotechnologies. The majority of thermal devices are constrained by Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation, whereby spectral directional absorptivity and emissivity are identical according to Lorentz reciprocity. This restriction introduces an intrinsic loss in a plethora of energy technologies and prevents us from controlling emission and absorption independently. Recently, there has been considerable progress in realizing nonreciprocal radiation to overcome these limitations. Here we summarize the fundamental physics of nonreciprocal radiation, lay out different approaches to generalize Kirchhoff’s law, and highlight several promising nonreciprocal thermal applications. This comprehensive overview of nonreciprocal thermal photonics may reveal new physics, unprecedented nonreciprocal effects and broader potential applications.

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Fig. 1: Fundamental physics of conventional Kirchhoff’s law and generalized Kirchhoff’s law.
Fig. 2: Nonreciprocal control of absorption and emission.
Fig. 3: Nonreciprocal energy harvesting and conversion.
Fig. 4: Near-field nonreciprocal thermal radiative heat transfer.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 52306103 and 52120105009) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (nos. BX20220200 and 2023M732199). C.-W.Q. acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Education, Republic of Singapore (grant no. A-8000107-01-00), and the National Research Foundation, Singapore (NRF), under NRF’s Medium Sized Centre: Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation μElectronics (SHINE) Centre funding programme. S.F. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy (grant no. DE-FG02-07ER46426).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Shuihua Yang, Mengqi Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuihua Yang & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  2. Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, MOE Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Mengqi Liu & Changying Zhao

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Shanhui Fan

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M.L. and C.-W.Q. conceived the ideas. All authors discussed the content of the Review. S.Y. and M.L. prepared the figures. M.L. and S.Y. wrote the paper with input and comments from all authors. C.Z., S.F. and C.-W.Q. supervised the project. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Changying Zhao, Shanhui Fan or Cheng-Wei Qiu.

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Yang, S., Liu, M., Zhao, C. et al. Nonreciprocal thermal photonics. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01409-y

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