A Study of the Enhancement in Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer by Surface Polaritons

The influence of surface polaritons on spectral energy flux at different temperatures or distances to the surface of a plate was analyzed. The relations of the net heat flux between two parallel plates with the material type were also discussed. The results demonstrate that the effect of surface polaritons is dominated in the spectral energy flux at 300 K when the distance is decreased to 100 nm. In addition, the intensity of surface polaritons increases with the temperature. The net heat flux between two parallel plates has a nearly linear relation with the temperature and is closely related to the material type. It reaches up to 2.792×10 7 W/m 2 between two SiC plates, approximately 3~6 orders of magnitude larger than that between two different materials. However, the net heat flux between SiC and Al is merely 2329.7 W/m 2 , even smaller than the result calculated by the classical stefan-boltzman law between two blackbodies.