Enhanced radiative heat transfer between nanostructured gold plates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nanostructuring gold plates with corrugations enhances radiative heat transfer, analyzing the role of plasmonic and guided modes as the surface geometry varies.

Contribution

It introduces a scattering theory approach to quantify heat transfer enhancement due to surface nanostructuring, focusing on the effects of corrugation depth.

Findings

Heat transfer increases with deeper corrugations.

Mode evolution explains the enhancement mechanism.

Geometric tuning controls heat transfer efficiency.

Abstract

We compute the radiative heat transfer between nanostructured gold plates in the framework of the scattering theory. We predict an enhancement of the heat transfer as we increase the depth of the corrugations while keeping the distance of closest approach fixed. We interpret this effect in terms of the evolution of plasmonic and guided modes as a function of the grating's geometry.