Coulomb force mediated heat transfer in the near field - geometric effect

TL;DR

This paper presents a theory showing that Coulomb interactions significantly enhance near-field heat transfer, especially in small geometries, with potential applications in designing metal-based meta-materials.

Contribution

It introduces a Coulomb-focused theoretical model for near-field heat transfer, emphasizing the impact of geometry and screening effects on transfer enhancement.

Findings

Single-site systems exhibit higher heat transfer enhancement than larger collections.

Screening effects reduce heat transfer as the system size increases.

The theory suggests potential for designing highly efficient heat transfer meta-materials.

Abstract

It has been shown recently that the Coulomb part of electromagnetic interactions is more important than transverse propagation waves for the near-field enhancement of heat transfer between metal objects at a distance of order nanometers. Here we present a theory focusing solely on the Coulomb potential between electrons hopping among tight-binding sites. When the relevant systems are reduced to very small geometry, for example, a single site, the enhancement is much higher compared to a collection of them packed within a distance of a few angstroms. We credit this to the screening effect. This result may be useful in designing metal-based meta-materials to enhance heat transfer much higher.