Frequency-selective near-field enhancement of radiative heat transfer via photonic-crystal slabs: a general computational approach for arbitrary geometries and materials

TL;DR

This paper presents a computational method to achieve frequency-selective near-field radiative heat transfer enhancement using photonic crystal slabs, revealing tradeoffs and symmetry effects that can be exploited for tailored thermal management.

Contribution

It introduces a general numerical approach based on FDTD for arbitrary geometries and materials, demonstrating frequency selectivity and symmetry-based enhancement in near-field heat transfer.

Findings

Enhanced heat transfer at designable frequencies using patterned slabs.

Tradeoff between selectivity and near-field enhancement at small separations.

Glide-symmetric configurations further increase heat transfer due to symmetry degeneracies.

Abstract

We demonstrate the possibility of achieving enhanced frequency-selective near-field radiative heat transfer between patterned (photonic crystal) slabs at designable frequencies and separations, exploiting a general numerical approach for computing heat transfer in arbitrary geometries and materials based on the finite-difference time-domain method. Our simulations reveal a tradeoff between selectivity and near-field enhancement as the slab--slab separation decreases, with the patterned heat transfer eventually reducing to the unpatterned result multiplied by a fill factor (described by a standard proximity approximation). We also find that heat transfer can be further enhanced at selective frequencies when the slabs are brought into a glide-symmetric configuration, a consequence of the degeneracies associated with the non-symmorphic symmetry group.