2015/01/02 by Yue Yang, Liping Wang · 53 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Composite material #Graphene #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Optical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials #Optics #Optoelectronics #Physics #Radiative transfer #Silicon carbide #Thermal #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermal properties of materials #Thermal radiation #Thermodynamics #Transistor #Voltage #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.06.013
published in Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 197, 68-75 (Elsevier BV) · 17 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2015/01/02 · openalex publication_date 2016/06/14 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv updated 2020/05/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
In this work, we propose a near-field radiative thermal transistor made of two graphene-covered silicon carbide (SiC) plates separated by a nanometer vacuum gap. Thick SiC plates serve as the thermal "source" and "drain", while graphene sheets function as the "gate" to modulate the near-field photon tunneling by tuning chemical potential with applied voltage biases symmetrically or asymmetrically. The radiative heat flux calculated from fluctuational electrodynamics significantly varies with graphene chemical potentials, which can tune the coupling between graphene plasmon across the vacuum gap. Thermal modulation, switching, and amplification, which are the key features required for a thermal transistor, are theoretically realized and analyzed. This work will pave the way to active thermal management, thermal circuits, and thermal computing.