Experimental investigations on the influence of curvature and materials on near-field thermal radiation

The bimaterial cantilever based near-field thermal radiation measurement setup was an experimental breakthrough in the field of near-field thermal radiation. The setup distinguishes itself from other experimental configurations at that time by allowing a direct measurement of the near-field thermal radiation without the need of fitting parameters. Part of this thesis was devoted to improve the measurement setup. The improved measurement setup is then further modified to experimentally investigate near-field thermal radiation between different geometries and materials. To date, the challenges of alignment of two heat-exchanging bodies have limited the existing experimental investigation on near-field thermal radiation to plate-plate, sphere-plate, and tip-plate measurement. However, theoretical calculations predict more interesting phenomenon beyond these three configurations. This thesis presents a method to measure near-field thermal radiation between two microspheres. The procedure to align two microspheres presented in this thesis extends the existing experimental capability, which is limited to sphere-plate configuration. This method can be further used to investigate the effect of different curvatures of the surface, such as two spheres with different radii, and sphere-cylinder. Recent progress on nanoscale radiative heat transfer has generated strong interest in controlling near-field thermal radiation. The ability to control near-field thermal radiation plays a significant role for applying this technology into applications such as radiative thermal diode, transistor, amplifier, and memory devices. Near-field thermal radiation can be tuned by changing carrier concentration. Using a doped silicon sphere, we demonstrate the tuning effect of near-field thermal radiation between doped silicon surfaces. This demonstration shows the potential application of near-field thermal radiation on controlling radiative transfer by modulating carrier concentration.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Sambegoro, Poetro Lebdo

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gang Chen.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103480

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/103480