Active control of thermal emission by graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurfaces

Abstract

Metasurfaces, together with graphene plasmonics, have become prominent for the emissivity control in thermal engineering, both passively, through changing the geometric parameters and packing density of the metasurfaces, and actively, through graphene gating or doping. We demonstrate a graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurface utilizing the hybrid localized surface plasmon modes of the nanowire array and graphene. The nanowire array makes the hybrid surface plasmon mode localized, allowing a free-space excitation. The single-layer graphene, via the gating between the underneath mirror and a top electrode, can actively tune the spectral emissivity by almost 90%. In addition, the graphene surface plasmon modes remove the strict polarization dependence of nanowire array emission, resulting in a fivefold enhancement of the P-polarized emissivity, especially for large emission angles.