Radiative thermal switch exploiting hyperbolic surface phonon polaritons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the radiative heat transfer between nanoparticles near hyperbolic materials can be actively controlled by rotation, leveraging hyperbolic surface phonon polaritons for tunable thermal management.

Contribution

It introduces a method to modulate nanoparticle heat flux using hyperbolic surface modes in hBN by rotating the particles, a novel approach for thermal control.

Findings

Heat flux can be efficiently modulated by nanoparticle rotation.

Hyperbolic surface modes enable directional control of radiative heat transfer.

The effect depends on the thickness of hBN and the distance between nanoparticles.

Abstract

We study the radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles in close vicinity to the natural hyperbolic material hBN with its optical axis oriented parallel to the interface. We show that the heat flux between the nanoparticles can be efficiently modulated when rotating the nanoparticles due to the coupling to the highly directional hyperbolic surface modes in hBN. Finally, we discuss the thickness and distance dependence of this effect.