Passive temperature control based on a phase change metasurface

Abstract

In this paper, a tunable mid-infrared metasurface based on VO2 phase change material is proposed for temperature control. The proposed structure consisting of a VO2/SiO2/VO2 cavity supports a thermally switchable Fabry-Perot-like resonance mode at the transparency window of the atmosphere. Theoretically, the radiative cooling power density of the proposed metasurface can be switched to four-fold as the device temperature is below/above the phase change temperature of VO2. Besides radiative cooling, a passive temperature control application based on this huge cooling power switching ability is theoretically demonstrated. We believe the proposed device can be applied for small radiative cooling and temperature control applications.