Near-Field Thermal Radiation of Nanopatterned Black Phosphorene Mediated by Topological Transitions of Phosphorene Plasmons

ABSTRACT

Emerging black phosphorene (BP) has unique advantages in mediating near-field thermal radiation due to its strong and tunable in-plane anisotropy, but relative researches are rarely reported in stark contrast to its gained tremendous attention in other fields. Here, we investigate near-field thermal radiation of nanopatterned BP considering different ways of patterning and electronic doping. Appropriate doping increases free carrier density, enabling the transition of BP from dielectrics to hyperbolic materials and the excitation of plasmon resonances. Nanopatterned BP is found to possess a higher radiative transfer rate by as high as 65% compared with plane counterparts due to topological transition of phosphorene ribbon plasmons from quasi-ellipses to quasi-hyperbolas. This work opens alternative routes to mediate and enhance near-field thermal radiation, which has promising applications in efficient thermal management and energy conversion.

KEYWORDS:

• Near-field thermal radiation
• black phosphorene
• hyperbolic
• surface plasmons

Acknowledgments

We also want to thank the help with calculating optical conductivities of black phosphorene from Bo Zhao (Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University).

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work is mainly supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51706096 and No. 51590901).