Real-Time ThermoTronics: handling fluctuations, dynamics and dissipation for smart radiative thermal management (RTTT)
Thermotronics is a developing discipline that offers promising options to manage heat sources and proposes new ways of exploiting signals encoded by heat. Analogously to what happens in electronic components in which electric currents flow as a consequence of potential differences, thermotronic components are devices in which heat currents flow due to applied temperature differences. In radiative components, thermal photons flow as electrons flow in their electronic counterparts. With this project we want to address fluctuations, dynamics and dissipation in thermotronic components which are based on nanoscale photon transport. In this way, our research focus on innovative strategies for an active control of radiative heat fluxes, strengthening tools and concepts for smart radiative thermal management.
A list of publications with results of the project is presented below. The list contains links to the Institutional Repository of University of Barcelona to download the articles, thus ensuring open access to all publications of the project. In addition, some results of the proposal are briefly described. Finally, we provide links to a data repository where generated data supporting our results can be downloaded.
Publications
[1] I. Latella, S.-A. Biehs and P. Ben-Abdallah. Smart thermal management with near-field thermal radiation, Optics Express 29, 24816-24833 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.433539; https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.13999; institutional repository
[2] I. Latella and P. Ben-Abdallah. Graphene-based autonomous pyroelectric system for near-field energy conversion, Sci. Rep. 11, 19489 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98656-8; https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05564; institutional repository
[3] I. Latella, P. Ben-Abdallah and M. Nikbakht. Radiative thermal rectification in many-body systems, Phys. Rev. B 104, 045410 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.104.045410; https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.06891; institutional repository
[4] I. Latella, A. Campa, L. Casetti, P. Di Cintio, J. M. Rubi and S. Ruffo. Monte Carlo simulations in the unconstrained ensemble, Phys. Rev. E 103, L061303 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.103.L061303; https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06103; institutional repository
Results
The results of the project are published in the references listed above. Here we briefly describe some key points and refer the reader to the publications for further details.
Smart radiative thermal management
In [1] we review the recent progress on the passive and active control of near-field radiative heat exchange in two- and many-body systems. Topics covered therein include: thermal rectification (radiative diodes); modulation and switching of heat transfer; heat splitting and focusing; active insulation, cooling and refrigeration; and logical circuits that can be built, e.g., using radiative thermal transistors.
Dynamical temperature modulation
As the separation between objects is reduced, the heat exchange considerably increases due to the contribution of evanescent waves. Hence, the thermal dynamics is much faster in the near field as compared to the far field. By covering the emitters with graphene (whose properties can be actively controlled with an applied voltage), we shown in [2] that the temperature of a suspended thin film can be modulated at kHz frequencies. On the one hand, this effect can be implemented for energy harvesting with pyroelectric materials, as described in [2]. On the other hand, this in itself offers the possibility of a relatively fast control of thermal fluxes that can be employed in self-powered, hybrid electric-thermal circuitry for smart thermal management.
Many-body radiative thermal rectifiers
Two-body radiative thermal diodes rectify heat flows thanks to a temperature dependence of the material optical properties. The asymmetry of heat transport through these systems, however, is weak if the temperature dependence of such properties is poor. In [3] we demonstrated that a significant rectification is possible in three-element radiative systems even when the dependence of the optical properties on the temperature is negligible. This work paves the way for compact devices to rectify near-field radiative heat fluxes over a broad temperature range and could have important applications in the domain of nanoscale thermal management.
Simulating completely open systems
We shown in [4] that a confined fluid exchanging heat, work and matter with the environment can attain equilibrium states under completely open conditions, and presented a Mote Carlo algorithm to perform simulations in the corresponding ensemble. This is a first step to describe a situation in which the system is a confined photon gas with fluctuating boundaries, which may be relevant in small scale devices with heat and momentum transfer.
Open data
Relevant data generated in the project are shown by means of figures in the publications mentioned above. For each publication, below we provide a link to a data repository where the generated data are openly accessible.
Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 892718.
