A Review of Tunable Wavelength Selectivity of Metamaterials in Near-Field and Far-Field Radiative Thermal Transport

Abstract

Radiative thermal transport of metamaterials has begun to play a significant role in thermal science and has great engineering applications. When the key features of structures become comparable to the thermal wavelength at a particular temperature, a narrowband or wideband of wavelengths can be created or shifted in both the emission and reflection spectrum of nanoscale metamaterials. Due to the near-field effect, the phenomena of radiative wavelength selectivity become significant. These effects show strong promise for applications in thermophotovoltaic energy harvesting, nanoscale biosensing, and increased energy efficiency through radiative cooling in the near future. This review paper summarizes the recent progress and outlook of both near-field and far-field radiative heat transfer, different design structures of metamaterials, applications of unique thermal and optical properties, and focuses especially on exploration of the tunable radiative wavelength selectivity of nano-metamaterials.

A Review on Thermophotovoltaic Cell and Its Applications in Energy Conversion: Issues and Recommendations

“…Datas and Martí [ 10 ] reviewed the state of the art and historical development of TPV for space application along with the main competing technologies. Tain et al [ 11 ] reported the recent progress of near-field and far-field radiative heat transfer, various design structures of metamaterials and their properties, and focused on the exploration of tunable radiative wavelength selectivity of nano-metamaterials. More recently, in 2019, Sakakibara et al [ 12 ] reviewed the state of the art of radiator and presented a systematic approach for assessing radiators.…”

Enhancing solar-thermal energy conversion with silicon-cored tungsten nanowire selective metamaterial absorbers

“…Within the last decade, nanostructured metamaterials have become an attractive topic in the field of radiative heat transfer for thermal energy harvesting ( Bello and Shanmugan, 2020 ; Jin et al., 2016 ; Khodasevych et al., 2015 ; Woolf et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2020 ) and radiative cooling ( Raman et al., 2014 ; Zhai et al., 2017 ). For harvesting solar energy to heat, spectrally selective absorbers with high solar absorption and low infrared emission are highly desired for efficient energy conversion, and many metamaterial selective solar absorbers have been designed and experimentally demonstrated recently based on multilayer ( Chirumamilla et al., 2016 , 2019 ; Dyachenko et al., 2016 ; Khoza et al., 2019 ; Thomas et al., 2017 ; Wang et al., 2018 ), periodic tungsten convex or concave gratings ( Jae Lee et al., 2014 ; Wang et al., 2015 ; Wang and Wang, 2013 ), nickel nanopyramids and tungsten nanowires (WNWs)/doughnuts ( Behera and Joseph, 2017 ; Li et al., 2015 ; Tian et al., 2018 ), and nanoporous or nanoparticle composite structures ( Lu et al., 2016 , 2017 ; Prasad et al., 2018 ). Due to their submicron feature sizes, advanced fabrication techniques such as electron-beam lithography and focused-ion beam were usually needed for fabricating these metamaterial structures ( Wang et al., 2015 ), which are expensive with low throughput prohibiting their large-area application.…”

Tungsten Based Spectrally Selective Absorbers with Anisotropic Rough Surface Texture

“…Selective absorbers are commonly used in various fields due to their high absorptivity at specific wavelengths [ 39 ]. Spectrally selective filters can be used in various applications involving solar absorbers [ 40 ], sensors [ 41 ], passive cooling [ 21 , 42 ], and thermophotovoltaic devices [ 43 ].…”