Near-field radiative heat transfer between nanowire-based dual uniaxial magneto-dielectric metamaterials

Abstract

Over past several years, much attention has been paid on near-field radiation with super-Planckian heat flux due to resonant coupling of surface polaritons and non-resonant hyperbolic modes but mainly with non-magnetic materials. With nanowire-based magneto-dielectric metamaterials, this work theoretically investigates the near-field radiative heat transfer associated with both uniaxial magnetic and electric responses. Maxwell-Garnett effective medium theory is used to obtain the dual uniaxial effective permeability and permittivity of the magneto-dielectric metamaterials. With the fluctuational electrodynamics, multiple resonant and non-resonant modes associated with both magnetic and electric responses that spectrally enhance the radiative heat transfer, such as magnetic and electric hyperbolic modes, magnetic and electric surface polaritons, mu- and epsilon-near-pole modes, are identified and elucidated at different wave polarizations. Effects of filling ratio, magnetic and electric scattering rates, and vacuum gap distance are also studied, and it is found that the spectral and total heat fluxes of s-polarized waves, which are usually neglected for non-magnetic materials, are much enhanced and comparable with that of p-polarized waves. The results here will deepen the fundamental understanding in magneto-dielectric metamaterials and facilitate their applications in the area of near-field thermal radiation. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.