Role of graphene on the enhancement of near-field radiative heat transfer between two homogeneous lossy media plates

Abstract

In this paper, the near-field radiative heat transfer between two semi-infinite plates with different temperatures, which are composed of homogeneous lossy media, has been studied firstly. Attributed to the evanescent wave generated by total internal reflection, the near-field radiative heat transfer is much larger than the far-field radiative heat transfer. And, the closer the distance between the two plates is, the greater the heat transfer is. Then, a graphene layer has been used to cover on the surface of the plate with lower temperature to study the effect of graphene on the near-field radiative heat transfer. The results show that the existence of graphene can promote the near-field radiative heat transfer due to the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on the surface of graphene. In addition, the heat transfer varies with chemical potential of graphene, which indicates that the near-field radiative heat transfer can be controlled by an external gate circuit. In the presence of graphene, the thermal resistance between the two plates ranges from 6.7×10−4 to 0.18 K/(W/m2) and increases with the increase of the thickness of vacuum gap between the plates.