English

Hybrid optical-thermal devices and materials for light manipulation and radiative cooling

Optics 2015-09-10 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Materials Science Computational Physics

Abstract

We report on optical design and applications of hybrid meso-scale devices and materials that combine optical and thermal management functionalities owing to their tailored resonant interaction with light in visible and infrared frequency bands. We outline a general approach to designing such materials, and discuss two specific applications in detail. One example is a hybrid optical-thermal antenna with sub-wavelength light focusing, which simultaneously enables intensity enhancement at the operating wavelength in the visible and reduction of the operating temperature. The enhancement is achieved via light recycling in the form of whispering-gallery modes trapped in an optical microcavity, while cooling functionality is realized via a combination of reduced optical absorption and radiative cooling. The other example is a fabric that is opaque in the visible range yet highly transparent in the infrared, which allows the human body to efficiently shed energy in the form of thermal emission. Such fabrics can find numerous applications for personal thermal management and for buildings energy efficiency improvement.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.02516,
  title  = {Hybrid optical-thermal devices and materials for light manipulation and radiative cooling},
  author = {Svetlana V. Boriskina and Jonathan K. Tong and Wei-Chun Hsu and Lee Weinstein and Xiaopeng Huang and James Loomis and Yanfei Xu and Gang Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.02516},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Proc. SPIE 9546, Active Photonic Materials VII, 95461U (September 1, 2015) 7 pages, 4 figures