Radiative heat transfer exceeding the blackbody limit between macroscale planar surfaces separated by a nanosize vacuum gap

Using Rytov’s fluctuational electrodynamics framework, Polder and Van Hove predicted that radiative heat transfer between planar surfaces separated by a vacuum gap smaller than the thermal wavelength exceeds the blackbody limit due to tunnelling of evanescent modes. This finding has led to the conceptualization of systems capitalizing on evanescent modes such as thermophotovoltaic converters and thermal rectifiers. Their development is, however, limited by the lack of devices enabling radiative transfer between macroscale planar surfaces separated by a nanosize vacuum gap. Here we measure radiative heat transfer for large temperature differences (∼120 K) using a custom-fabricated device in which the gap separating two 5 × 5 mm 2 intrinsic silicon planar surfaces is modulated from 3,500 to 150 nm. A substantial enhancement over the blackbody limit by a factor of 8.4 is reported for a 150-nm-thick gap. Our device paves the way for the establishment of novel evanescent wave-based systems. Evanescent coupling between surfaces separated by a distance smaller than the thermal wavelength can lead to radiative heat transfer greater than the blackbody limit. Here, the authors demonstrate this between two macroscopic-scale surfaces, paving the way to harnessing the effect in thermal devices.