Near-field force and energy exchange between two objects due to quantum electrodynamic fluctuations give rise to interesting phenomena such as Casimir and van der Waals forces, and thermal radiative transfer exceeding Planck's theory of blackbody radiation. Although significant progress has been made in the past on the precise measurement of Casimir force related to zero-point energy, experimental demonstration of near-field enhancement of radiative heat transfer is difficult. In this work, we present a sensitive technique of measuring near-field radiative transfer between a microsphere and a substrate using a bi-material atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever, resulting in "heat transfer-distance" curves. Measurements of radiative transfer between a sphere and a flat substrate show the presence of strong near-field effects resulting in enhancement of heat transfer over the predictions of the Planck blackbody radiation theory.
Radiative energy transfer between closely spaced bodies is known to be significantly larger than that predicted by classical radiative transfer because of tunneling due to evanescent waves. Theoretical analysis of near--field radiative transfer is mainly restricted to radiative transfer between two half--spaces or spheres treated in the dipole approximation (very small sphere) or proximity force approximation (radius of sphere much greater than the gap). Sphere--sphere or sphere--plane configurations beyond the dipole approximation or proximity force approximation have not been attempted. In t…
In this work, we present expressions for radiative heat transfer between pairs of spheres in a linear chain and between individual spheres and their environment. The expressions are valid for coated spheres of arbitrary size, spacing, and isotropic optical properties. The spheres may be small and closely-spaced, which violates the assumptions foundational to classical radiative transfer. We validate our results against existing formulations of radiative heat transfer, namely the thermal discrete dipole and boundary element methods. Our results have important implications for the modeling and i…
We use fluctuational electrodynamics to determine emissivity and van der Waals contribution to surface energy for various spherical shapes, such as a sphere, a bubble, a spherical shell and a coated sphere, in a homogeneous and isotropic medium. Near-field radiative transfer and momentum transfer between flat plates and curved surfaces have been studied for the past decades, however the investigation of radiative heat transfer and van der Waals stress due to fluctuations of electromagnetic fields for a single object is missing from literature. The dyadic Green's function formalism of radiative…
Strain-balanced Quantum Well Solar Cells (SB- QWSCs) are radiatively dominated at concentrator current levels. Incorporating back surface mirrors on the back of the doped substrate leads to a reduction in this radiative recombination current while the non-radiative dark current at lower bias remains unchanged. This work extends a previous model of radiative dark currents to cells where the substrate is not a perfectly absorbing sink for emitted luminescence by including multiple passes of photons emitted by radiative recombination. The luminescence in such mirrored structures is reduced and th…
In this work, we present an expression for the near-field thermal radiative transfer between two spheres with an arbitrary numbers of coatings. We numerically demonstrate that the spectrum of heat transfer between layered spheres exhibits novel features due to the newly introduced interfaces between coatings and cores. These features include broad super-Planckian peaks at non-resonant frequencies and near-field selective emission between metallic spheres with polar material coatings. Spheres with cores and coatings of two different polar materials are also shown to exceed the total conductance…
Controlling the temperature in architectures involving nanoparticles and substrates is a key issue for applications involving micro and nanoscale heat transfer. We study the thermal behavior of a single nanoparticle interacting with a flat substrate under external monochromatic illumination, and with thermal radiation as the unique heat loss channel. We develop a model to compute the temperature of the nanoparticle, based on an effective dipole-polarizability approach. Using numerical simulations, we thoroughly investigate the impacts of various parameters affecting the nanoparticle temperatur…
Substrates have strong effects on optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, which have emerged as promising platforms for exotic physical phenomena and outstanding applications. To reliably interpret experimental results and predict such effects at 2D interfaces, theoretical methods accurately describing electron correlation and electron-hole interaction such as first-principles many-body perturbation theory are necessary. In our previous work [Phys. Rev. B 102, 205113(2020)], we developed the reciprocal-space linear interpolation method that can take into account the effect…
We study the radiative heat transfer and the van der Waals friction between graphene and an amorphous SiO$_2$ substrate. We study the surface phonon-polaritons contribution to the low-field mobility as a function of temperature and of carrier density. We find that the electric current saturate at a high electric field, in agreement with experiment. The saturation current depends weakly on the temperature, which we attribute to the "quantum" friction between the graphene carriers and the substrate optical phonons. We calculate the frictional drag between two graphene sheets caused by van der Wa…
We investigate the thermal radiation and thermal near-field energy density of a metal-coated semi-infinite body for different substrates. We show that the surface polariton coupling within the metal coating leads to an enhancement of the TM-mode part of the thermal near-field energy density when a polar substrate is used. In this case the result obtained for a free standing metal film is retrieved. In contrast, in the case of a metal substrate there is no enhancement in the TM-mode part, as can also be explained within the framework of surface plasmon coupling within the coating. Finally, we d…
We study the near-field radiative energy transfer between graphene and an amorphous SiO$_2$ substrate. In comparison with the existing theories of near-field radiative heat transfer our theory takes into account that the free carriers in graphene are moving relative to the substrate with a drift velocity $v$. In this case the heat flux is determined by both thermal and quantum fluctuations. We find that quantum fluctuations give an important contribution to the radiative energy transfer for low temperatures and high electric field (large drift velocities). For nonsuspended graphene the near-fi…
Disentangling the contributions of radiative and non-radiative localized plasmonic modes from the photonic density of states of metallic nanocavities between atomically-sharp tips and flat substrates remains an experimental challenge nowadays. Electroluminescence due to tunnelling through the tip-substrate gap allows discerning solely the excitation of radiative modes, but this information is inherently convolved with that of the electronic structure of the system. In this work we present a fully experimental procedure to eliminate the electronic-structure factors from the scanning tunnelling …
The surface tension of compliant materials such as gels provides resistance to deformation in addition to and sometimes surpassing that due to elasticity. This article studies how surface tension changes the contact mechanics of a small hard sphere indenting a soft elastic substrate. Previous studies have examined the special case where the external load is zero, so contact is driven by adhesion alone. Here, we tackle the much more complicated problem where, in addition to adhesion, deformation is driven by an indentation force. We present an exact solution based on small strain theory. The re…
Though the dependence of near-field radiative transfer on the gap between two planar objects is well understood, that between curved objects is still unclear. We show, based on the analysis of the surface polariton mediated radiative transfer between two spheres of equal radii $R$ and minimum gap $d$, that the near--field radiative transfer scales as $R/d$ as $d/R \rightarrow 0$ and as $\ln(R/d)$ for larger values of $d/R$ up to the far--field limit. We propose a modified form of the proximity approximation to predict near--field radiative transfer between curved objects from simulations of ra…
We show that the radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles can be significantly amplified when they are placed in proximity of a planar substrate supporting a surface resonance. The amplification factor goes beyond two orders of magnitude in the case of dielectric nanoparticles, whereas it is lower in the case of metallic nanoparticles. We analyze how this effect depends on the frequency and on the particles-surface distance, by clearly identifying the signature of the surface mode producing the amplification. Finally, we show how the presence of a graphene sheet on top of the substrate ca…
We study the blueshift of the surface plasmon (SP) resonance energy of isolated Ag nanoparticles with decreasing particle diameter, which we recently measured using electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). As the particle diameter decreases from 26 down to 3.5 nm, a large blueshift of 0.5 eV of the SP resonance energy is observed. In this paper, we base our theoretical interpretation of our experimental findings on the nonlocal hydrodynamic model, and compare the effect of the substrate on the SP resonance energy to the approach of an effective homogeneous background permittivity. We derive t…
When a soft hydrogel sphere is placed on a rigid hydrophilic substrate, it undergoes arrested spreading by forming an axisymmetric foot near the contact line, while conserving its global spherical shape. In contrast, liquid water (that constitutes greater than 90% of the hydrogel's volume) spreads into a thin film on the same surface. We study systematically this elastowetting of gel spheres on substrates of different surface energies, and find that their contact angle increases as the work of adhesion between the gel and the substrate decreases, as one would observe for drops of pure water - …
We demonstrate the possibility to rectify the nanoscale radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles by coupling them with the nonreciprocal surface modes of a magneto-optical substrate in a Voigt configuration. When the non-reciprocal medium supports a surface wave in the spectral window where heat exchanges take place the rectification coefficient can reach large values opening so the way to the design of true thermal diodes.
Dark plasmonic modes have interesting properties, such as a longer lifetime and a narrower linewidth than their radiative counterpart, as well as little to no radiative losses. However, they have not been extensively studied yet due to their optical inaccessibility. Using electron-energy loss (EEL) and cathodoluminescence (CL) spectroscopy, the dark radial breathing modes (RBMs) in thin, monochrystalline gold nanodisks are systematically investigated in this work. It is found that the RBMs can be detected in a CL set-up despite only collecting the far-field. Their visibility in CL is attribute…
We present a thermal device based on the near-field interaction between two substrates made of a polar and a metal-insulator-transition material. As a result of the temperature dependence of the optical properties, this device acts as a thermal rectifier, implying a strong asymmetry in the heat flux when reversing the two temperatures. By covering both substrates with a graphene sheet we show a significant enhancement of rectification coefficient. By investigating the flux spectral properties along with its distance dependence, we prove that this enhancement is associated to a change in the po…
The concept of quantum plasmonic excitations in plasmonic lattices, which similarly to Frenkel excitons in molecular crystals propagate by hopping from one nanoparticle to another, is introduced. A consistent quantum theory of such plasmonic excitons, beginning with the quantization of localized surface plasmons in a metal nanoparticle and including the radiative relaxation in both 1D and 2D lattices near a reflective substrate surface, is developed. A possible room-temperature Bose-Einstein condensation in the quantum gas of plasmonic excitons is also discussed.
The characteristic tip_substrate capacitance is crucial for understanding the localized electrical properties in atomic force microscopy (AFM). Since it is highly dependent on tip geometrical features, estimation of the tip_substrate characteristic capacitance for a given probe is very complex, involving empirical measurements and numerical simulations. In this paper we propose a facile approach to study the tip_substrate characteristic capacitance using AFM force spectroscopy technique. In this scheme, an analytical expression is considered to model the tip_sample interaction, in which the co…
Owing to its two dimensional electronic structure, graphene exhibits many unique properties. One of them is a wave vector and temperature dependent plasmon in the infrared range. Theory predicts that due to these plasmons, graphene can be used as a universal material to enhance nanoscale radiative heat exchange for any dielectric substrate. Here we report on radiative heat transfer experiments between SiC and a SiO2 sphere which have non matching phonon polariton frequencies, and thus only weakly exchange heat in near field. We observed that the heat flux contribution of graphene epitaxially g…
We present a computer code for calculating near- and far-field electromagnetic properties of multilayered spheres. STRATIFY is one-of-a-kind open-source package which allows for the efficient calculation of electromagnetic near-field, energy density, total electromagnetic energy, radiative and non-radiative decay rates of a dipole emitter located in any (non-absorbing) shell (including a host medium), and fundamental cross-sections of a multilayered sphere, all within a single program. The developed software is typically more than 50 times faster than freely available packages based on boundar…
We investigate the dynamical control of the heat flux exchanged in near-field regime between a membrane made with a phase-change material and a substrate when the temperature of the membrane is tuned around its critical value. We show that in interaction with an external source of thermal radiation, this system is multistable and behaves as a thermal transistor, being able to dynamically modulate and even amplify super-Planckian heat fluxes. This behavior could be used to dynamically control heat fluxes exchanged at the nanoscale in systems out of thermal equilibrium and to process thermal inf…
Revealing hidden non-radiative (dark) of resonant nanostructures using optical methods such as dark-field spectroscopy often becomes a sophisticated problem due to a weak coupling of these modes with a far-field radiation, whereas methods of dark-modes spectroscopy, e.g. cathodoluminescence or elastic energy losses, are not always convenient in use. Here, we suggest an approach for experimental determining the mode structure of a nanoresonator basing on utilizing intrinsic incoherent Raman scattering. We theoretically predict the efficiency of this approach and realize it experimentally for si…
Longitudinal contact-based vibrations of colloidal crystals with a controlled layer thickness are studied. These crystals consist of 390 nm diameter polystyrene spheres arranged into close packed, ordered lattices with a thickness of one to twelve layers. Using laser ultrasonics, eigenmodes of the crystals that have out-of-plane motion are excited. The particle-substrate and effective interlayer contact stiffnesses in the colloidal crystals are extracted using a discrete, coupled oscillator model. Extracted stiffnesses are correlated with scanning electron microscope images of the contacts and…
Hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) support propagating waves with arbitrarily large wavevectors over broad spectral ranges, and are uniquely valuable for engineering radiative thermal transport in the near field. Here, by employing a rational design approach based on the electromagnetic local density of states, we demonstrate the ability of HMMs to substantially rectify radiative heat flow. Our idea is to establish a forward-biased scenario where the two HMM-based terminals of a thermal diode feature overlapped hyperbolic bands which result in a large heat current, and suppress the reverse heat f…
