Thermal excitation of plasmons for near-field thermophotovoltaics

TL;DR

This paper explores high-temperature plasmonics for near-field thermophotovoltaics, demonstrating how thermal excitation of plasmons can improve energy transfer and control thermal emission using epsilon-near-zero metamaterials.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to excite plasmons thermally at high temperatures for near-field energy applications and discusses controlling thermal emission via metamaterials.

Findings

High-temperature plasmonics can serve as narrow-band near-field emitters.

Epsilon-near-zero metamaterials enable control over Wien's displacement law.

The work opens new avenues in thermal emission control and slow light research.

Abstract

The traditional approaches of exciting plasmons consist of using electrons (eg: electron energy loss spectroscopy) or light (Kretchman and Otto geometry) while more recently plasmons have been excited even by single photons. A different approach: thermal excitation of a plasmon resonance at high temperatures using alternate plasmonic media was proposed by S. Molesky et.al., Opt. Exp. 21.101, A96-A110, (2013). Here, we show how the long-standing search for a high temperature narrow band near-field emitter for thermophotovoltaics can be fulfilled by high temperature plasmonics. We also describe how to control Wein's displacement law in the near-field using high temperature epsilon-near-zero metamaterials. Finally, we show that our work opens up an interesting direction of research for the field of slow light: thermal emission control.