Radiative Thermal Transistor

Developing thermal analogues of field-effect transistor could open the door\nto a low-power and even zero-power communication technology working with heat\nrather than electricity. These solid-sate devices could also find many\napplications in the field of active thermal management in numerous technologies\n(microelectronic, building science, energy harvesting,conversion,...). Recent\ntheoretical works has suggested that a photonic transistor made with three\nterminals can in principle be used to switch, modulate, and even amplify heat\nflux through exchange of thermal photons. Here, we report an experimental\ndemonstration of thermal transistor effect using a non-contact system composed\nby a temperature-controlled metal-insulator-based material interacting in\nfar-field regime with two blackbodies held at two different temperatures. We\ndemonstrate that, with a tiny change in the temperature of the active layer,\nthe heat flux received by the cold blackbody can be drastically modified. An\namplification parameter of heat flux over 20 is reported.\n