Tuning Coherent Radiative Thermal Conductance in Multilayer Photonic Crystals

Abstract

We consider coherent radiative thermal conductance of a multilayer photonic crystal. The crystal consists of alternating layers of lossless dielectric slabs and vacuum, where heat is conducted only through photons. We show that such a structure can have thermal conductance below vacuum over the entire high temperature range, due to the presence of partial band gap in most of the frequency range, as well as the suppression of evanescent tunneling between slabs at higher frequencies. The thermal conductance of this structure is highly tunable by varying the thickness of the vacuum layers.

add a paragraph at the end on the applicability of the mechanism to silicon; accepted by Applied Physics Letters (2008)