Near-Field Thermal Transistor

Abstract

Using a block of three separated solid elements, a thermal source and drain together with a gate made of an insulator-metal transition material exchanging near-field thermal radiation, we introduce a nanoscale analog of a field-effect transistor that is able to control the flow of heat exchanged by evanescent thermal photons between two bodies. By changing the gate temperature around its critical value, the heat flux exchanged between the hot body (source) and the cold body (drain) can be reversibly switched, amplified, and modulated by a tiny action on the gate. Such a device could find important applications in the domain of nanoscale thermal management and it opens up new perspectives concerning the development of contactless thermal circuits intended for information processing using the photon current rather than the electric current.

Manipulating the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity of graphene phononic crystal

“…[7][8][9][10][11][12] Due to the heat transfer in graphene mainly contributed by phonons, [5] the thermal conductivity of graphene can be manipulated by the management of phonons.…”

Phonon transport effects in one-dimensional width-modulated graphene nanoribbons

“…Examples of these features include that: i) the thermal conductivity could deviate from Fourier's law [1][2][3][4][5], ii) a crossover is observed from ballistic into diffusive transport regimes [6,7], or from nanoto macro-scale behaviors [8,9], iii) the thermal conductivity could even increase under channel width confinement [10,11], iv) band mismatch under extreme confinement could result to phonon localization and 'effective transmission bandgaps' [12], v) heat transport could be below the Casimir or the amorphous limits, and many more [13,14]. Several interesting device concepts have also emerged recently in the area of phononics, which attempt to use heat to perform transistor action [15], create heat rectifiers [16], engineer the sound velocities and phonon dispersions, etc. [13,17,18].…”

Effect of shape in near-field thermal transfer for periodic structures

“…This fact has inspired researchers to generate similar techniques for controlling the near-field thermal transfer similar to the ones that have been developed for controlling thermal emission [5][6][7][8] . Such efforts have lead to the design of nanostructures for a variety of applications such as thermal rectifiers 9 , thermal diodes 10 , and near-field thermal transistors 11 .…”