Radiative thermal rectification in many-body systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that many-body interactions in three-element radiative systems can produce strong thermal rectification without relying on temperature-dependent material properties, enabling efficient near-field heat flow control.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach showing that many-body effects can induce significant thermal rectification independently of material property changes.

Findings

Rectification coefficients exceeding 50% achieved.

Strong asymmetry in thermal conductance demonstrated.

Applicable for nanoscale thermal management devices.

Abstract

Radiative thermal diodes based on two-element structures rectify heat flows thanks to a temperature dependence of material optical properties. The heat transport asymmetry through these systems, however, remains weak without a significant change in material properties with the temperature. Here we explore the heat transport in three-element radiative systems and demonstrate that a strong asymmetry in the thermal conductance can appear because of many-body interactions, without any dependence of optical properties on the temperature. The analysis of transport in three-body systems made with polar dielectrics and metallic layers reveals that rectification coefficients exceeding 50 % can be achieved in the near-field regime with temperature differences of about 200 K. This work paves the way for compact devices to rectify near field radiative heat fluxes over a broad temperature range and could have important applications in the domain of nanoscale thermal management.