Biomimicry designs for passive optical solutions for nanoscale radiative cooling applications

Abstract

Inspired by the mechanism of the wings of Morpho butterfly, here we propose biomimicry designs which have the potential to be used for radiative cooling purposes. We numerically analyzed the spontaneous emission at near-field and determined radiative heat flux at nano-scale in order to investigate the impact of geometric variations and material selection in these systems. Our findings suggest that these metasurfaces which support phononic surface waves, can be used to tailor radiative heat transfer at nano-scale in the atmospheric transparency window (8-13 mu m) within the infrared regime.