Tunable Thermal Emissivity of 2D Material Devices

Sivananthan Laboratories in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida propose to model absorption in two dimensional materials and develop designs with structured materials for the amplitude modulation of emissivity. The optical simulations—with commercial COMSOL code--will be used in the calculation of the electric field distribution in the structured materials, and a combination of first-principles codes—Quantum Expresso and SIESTA—and empirical methods—tight-binding and k.p— will be used to calculate field-dependent absorption coefficients. The optical and electronic structure calculations will be iterated for emissivity modulation performance optimization. We will evaluate many materials systems and efficiently design options. At the end of Phase I, we expect to arrive at design(s) with predicted emissivity modulation performance, materials synthesis and structure fabrication approaches, identified issues and mitigations, and a timeline for emissivity modulation demonstration.