Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer between Disordered Multilayer Systems

Abstract

Near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) research is an important research project after a major breakthrough in nanotechnology. Based on the multilayer structure, we find that due to the existence of inherent losses, the decoupling of hyperbolic modes (HMs) after changing the filling ratio leads to suppression of heat flow near the surface mode resonance frequency. It complements the physical landscape of enhancement of near-field radiative heat transfer by HMs and more surface states supported by multiple surfaces. More importantly, considering the difficulty of accurate preparation at the nanoscale, we introduce the disorder factor to describe the magnitude of the random variation of the layer thickness of the multilayer structure and then explore the effect on heat transfer when the layer thickness is slightly different from the exact value expected. We find that the near-field radiative heat flux decreases gradually as the disorder increases because of interlayer energy localization. However, the reduction in heat transfer does not exceed an order of magnitude, although the disorder is already very large. At the same time, the regulation effect of the disorder on NFRHT is close to that of the same degree of filling ratio, which highlights the importance of disordered systems. This work qualitatively describes the effect of disorder on heat transfer and provides instructive data for the fabrication of NFRHT devices.