Active control of thermal emission by graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurfaces

Abstract: Metasurfaces, together with graphene plasmonics, have become prominent for the emissivity control in thermal engineering, both passively through changing the geometric parameters and packing density of the metasurfaces, and actively through graphene gating or doping. We demonstrate a graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurface utilizing the hybrid localized surface plasmon modes of the nanowire array and graphene. The nanowire array makes the hybrid surface plasmon mode localized, allowing a free-space excitation. The single layer graphene, via the gating between the underneath mirror and a top electrode, can actively tune the spectral emissivity by almost 90%. In addition, the hybrid plasmon mode provides an extra degree of freedom to modulate the p-polarized emissivity with a five-fold enhancement, especially for large emission angles.