Near-Field Radiative Cooling of Nanostructures

We measure near-field radiative cooling of a thermally
isolated
nanostructure up to a few degrees and show that in principle this
process can efficiently cool down localized hotspots by tens of degrees
at submicrometer gaps. This process of cooling is achieved without
any physical contact, in contrast to heat transfer through conduction,
thus enabling novel cooling capabilities. We show that the measured
trend of radiative cooling agrees well theoretical predictions and
is limited mainly by the geometry of the probe used here as well as
the minimum separation that could be achieved in our setup. These
results also pave the way for realizing other new effects based on
resonant heat transfer, like thermal rectification and negative thermal
conductance.