Hybrid optical-thermal devices and materials for light manipulation and radiative cooling

TL;DR

This paper presents hybrid optical-thermal devices and materials that manipulate light and manage heat, enabling applications like enhanced light focusing with cooling and fabrics that emit infrared radiation for thermal regulation.

Contribution

It introduces a general design approach for hybrid optical-thermal materials and demonstrates two innovative applications with enhanced light manipulation and cooling capabilities.

Findings

Hybrid optical-thermal antenna achieves sub-wavelength light focusing and cooling.

Infrared-transparent fabrics enable efficient thermal emission from the human body.

Design principles can be applied to develop advanced thermal management materials.

Abstract

We report on optical design and applications of hybrid meso-scale devices and materials that combine optical and thermal management functionalities owing to their tailored resonant interaction with light in visible and infrared frequency bands. We outline a general approach to designing such materials, and discuss two specific applications in detail. One example is a hybrid optical-thermal antenna with sub-wavelength light focusing, which simultaneously enables intensity enhancement at the operating wavelength in the visible and reduction of the operating temperature. The enhancement is achieved via light recycling in the form of whispering-gallery modes trapped in an optical microcavity, while cooling functionality is realized via a combination of reduced optical absorption and radiative cooling. The other example is a fabric that is opaque in the visible range yet highly transparent in the infrared, which allows the human body to efficiently shed energy in the form of thermal emission. Such fabrics can find numerous applications for personal thermal management and for buildings energy efficiency improvement.