Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer through nonreciprocal surface plasmons drift-biased graphene metasurfaces

Yong Zhang, Chenglong Zhou, Lei Qu, Hong-Liang Yi

Published 2019-12-12Version 1

We demonstrate in this work that the use of the unusual nonreciprocal properties of surface plasmon polaritons in drift-biased graphene-based metasurfaces provides a new energy transmission mode of evanescent wave to largely enhance and tune near-field radiative heat transfer. Applying a drift current on a graphene sheet leads to extremely asymmetric photonic transmission modle, associated with plasmons with low loss (high loss and ultrahigh confinement) traveling along (against) the bias. The findings will open a new way to spectrally control near-field radiative transfer by nonreciprocal surface plasmon polaritons, which holds great potential for improving the performance of energy systems like near-field thermophotovoltaics and thermal modulator.