Thermal diode utilizing tunneling of thermal photons

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K17538
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: General applied physics
• Research Institution: Toyota Central R&D Lab., Inc.
• Principal Investigator: Kota Ito 株式会社豊田中央研究所, フロンティア研究領域, 研究リーダ (70463685)
• Research Collaborator: Toshiyoshi HIROSHI 東京大学, 生産技術研究所 (50282603)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 熱輻射 / 熱変調器 / 相転移 / 熱ダイオード

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Thermal diode is attracting broad interest, and near-field radiative heat transfer is expected to control thermal radiation beyond the blackbody limit. We confirmed by experiment that the radiative heat transfer is dynamically modulated beyond the blackbody limit. The near-field electromagnetic heat exchange mediated by phonon-polariton is controlled by the metal-insulator transition of tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide. The heat flux is transferred across a 370 nm gap, which is maintained by the microfabricated spacers and applied pressure. The uniformity of the gap is validated by optical interferometry, and the measured heat transfer is well modeled as the sum of the radiative and the parasitic conductive components. The presented methodology to form a nanometric gap with functional heat flux paves the way to the smart thermal management in various scenes ranging from highly integrated systems to macroscopic apparatus.

Free Research Field

応用物理