Heat breaks the rules at the nanoscale and scientists used it to their advantage
Key takeaways
- A steaming cup of coffee gradually cools, a laptop warms up during use, and sunlight heats the Earth's surface.
- Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, working with collaborators at Stanford University and Purdue University, have now demonstrated a powerful new method for controlling heat at the nanoscale.
- The research centers on a phenomenon known as near-field radiative heat transfer.
Why this matters: new research or scientific developments with potential real-world impact.
Heat is something we encounter every day. A steaming cup of coffee gradually cools, a laptop warms up during use, and sunlight heats the Earth's surface. Yet when heat is examined at distances far smaller than the width of a human hair, it can behave in unexpected ways.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, working with collaborators at Stanford University and Purdue University, have now demonstrated a powerful new method for controlling heat at the nanoscale. Their findings, published in Nature, provide strong experimental evidence that heat transfer can be intentionally engineered and significantly enhanced using specially designed metamaterials.
The research centers on a phenomenon known as near-field radiative heat transfer. When two objects are separated by an extremely small distance, only a few hundred nanometers, heat can travel between them much more efficiently than it does under ordinary conditions.