Related papers: Near-field thermodynamics: Useful work, efficiency…
We study the thermodynamics of near-field thermal radiation between two identical polar media at different temperatures. As an application, we consider an idealized energy harvesting process from sources at near room temperature at the…
We analyse the process of conversion of near-field thermal radiation into usable work by considering the radiation emitted between two planar sources supporting surface phonon-polaritons. The maximum work flux that can be extracted from the…
We derive the thermodynamic limits of harvesting power from the outgoing thermal radiation from the ambient to the cold outer space. The derivations are based on a duality relation between thermal engines that harvest solar radiation and…
The understanding of far-field thermal radiation had directly led to the discovery of quantum mechanics a century ago, and is of great current practical importance for applications in energy conversions, radiative cooling, and thermal…
In the close vicinity of a hot body, at distances smaller than the thermal wavelength, a high electromagnetic energy density exists due to the presence of evanescent fields radiated by the partial charges in motion around its surface. This…
We study the near-field heat exchange between hyperbolic materials and demonstrate that these media are able to support broadband frustrated modes which transport heat by photon tunnelling with a high efficiency close to the theoretical…
Thermoelectric energy harvesters can have a much higher conversion efficiency by implementing quantum dots/wells between the high temperature region and the low temperature region. However they still suffer a limitation of the maximum…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
When two objects at different temperatures are separated by a vacuum gap they can exchange heat by radiation only. At large separation distances (far-field regime) the amount of transferred heat flux is limited by Stefan-Boltzmann's law…
Near-field heat engines are devices that convert the evanescent thermal field supported by a primary source into usable mechanical energy. By analyzing the thermodynamic performance of three-body near-field heat engines, we demonstrate that…
The photoelectric effect induced by blackbody radiation could be a mechanism to harvest ambient thermal energy at a uniform temperature. Here, I describe (without going too much into mathematical details) the theoretical model I developed…
Thermal emission is typically associated with a blackbody at a temperature above absolute zero, which exchanges energy with its environment in the form of radiation. Blackbody thermal emission is largely incoherent both spatially and…
Near-field electromagnetic heat transfer holds great potential for the advancement of nanotechnology. Whereas far-field electromagnetic heat transfer is constrained by Planck's blackbody limit, the increased density of states in the…
The near-field electromagnetic interaction between nanoscale objects produces enhanced radiative heat transfer that can greatly surpass the limits established by far-field black-body radiation. Here, we present a theoretical framework to…
With the continuous advancement of nanotechnology, nanodevices have become crucial components in computing, sensing and energy conversion applications. However, the structures of nanodevices typically possess sub-wavelength dimensions and…
A theory is presented to describe the heat-flux radiated in near-field regime by a set of interacting nanoemitters held at different temperatures in vacuum or above a solid surface. We show that this thermal energy can be focused and even…
Near-field radiative heat transfer allows heat to propagate across a small vacuum gap in quantities that are several orders of magnitude greater then the heat transfer by far-field, blackbody radiation. Although heat transfer via near-field…
We modify and extend a recently proposed four-wave mixing scheme [Opt. Express 25 (19),23164 (2017)] for achieving near-field thermal upconversion and energy transfer, to demonstrate efficient thermal refrigeration at low intensities $\sim…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…
Environmentally-powered computer systems operate on renewable energy harvested from their environment, such as solar or wind, and stored in batteries. While harvesting environmental energy has long been necessary for small-scale embedded…