Passive temperature management based on near-field heat transfer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a passive temperature management device leveraging near-field heat transfer and graphene-plasmon enhanced evanescence wave tunneling, enabling automatic thermal regulation in high-power environments.

Contribution

It presents a novel, fully passive thermal management method that automatically adjusts emissivity to maintain temperature stability, suitable for integration into chip design.

Findings

Device operates within 0.5-7 KW/m^2 power range

Automatically regulates thermal emissivity for thermal homeostasis

Potential applications in vacuum environments

Abstract

Thermal or temperature management in modern machines has drawn great attentions in the last decades. The waste heat caused during the machine operation is particularly pernicious for the temperature-dependent electronics and may reduce the apparatus performance and lifetime. To control the operation temperature while maintaining high input powers is often a dilemma. Enormous works have been done for the purpose. Here, a passive temperature management method based on near-field heat transfer is introduced, utilizing graphene-plasmon enhanced evanescence wave tunneling. Within a pump power tolerance range of 0.5-7 KW m-2, the device can automatically regulate its thermal emissivity to quickly acquire thermal homeostasis around a designed temperature. It is compact, fully passive and could be incorporated into chip design. The results pave a promising way for passive thermal management that could be used in modern instruments in particular for vacuum environmental applications.