High-Temperature Strong Nonreciprocal Thermal Radiation from Semiconductors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nonreciprocal thermal radiation effects in semiconductors can persist at high temperatures up to 600 K, enabling advanced heat flow control for energy applications.

Contribution

It provides the first combined theoretical and experimental evidence of high-temperature nonreciprocal thermal radiation in semiconductors, extending previous near-room-temperature studies.

Findings

Nonreciprocal properties persist up to 600 K.

Theoretical model agrees with experimental data.

Strong nonreciprocity can exist above 800 K in stable semiconductors.

Abstract

Nonreciprocal thermal emitters that break the conventional Kirchhoff's law allow independent control of emissivity and absorptivity and promise exciting new functionalities in controlling heat flow for thermal and energy applications. In enabling some of these applications, nonreciprocal thermal emitters will unavoidably need to serve as hot emitters. Leveraging magneto-optical effects, degenerate semiconductors have been demonstrated as a promising optical material platform for nonreciprocal thermal radiation. However, existing modeling and experimental efforts are limited to near room temperature (< 373 K), and it remains elusive whether nonreciprocal properties can persist at high temperatures. In this work, we demonstrate strong nonreciprocal radiative properties at temperatures up to 600 K. We propose a theoretical model by considering the temperature dependence of the key parameters for the nonreciprocal behavior and experimentally investigate the temperature dependence of the nonreciprocal properties of InAs, a degenerate semiconductor, using a customized angle-resolved high-temperature magnetic emissometry setup. Our theoretical model and experimental results show an agreement, revealing that strong nonreciprocity can persist at temperatures over 800 K for high-temperature stable semiconductors, enabling a pathway for nonreciprocal radiative heat flow control at high temperatures.