Controlling Thermal Radiation by Defect Mode of One-dimensional Photonic Crystals Containing Negative-index Materials

A kind of different thermal radiation source which consists of photonic crystals (PCs) containing negative-index materials (NIM) coated atop SiC substrate was investigated theoretically by a transfer matrix method. The photonic crystals were inserted into a defect layer, and the wavelength range of them was tuned to approximately match with the wavelength range of the phonon absorption band of polar material SiC. So the structure can only radiate the light with same wavelength as the zero-(n) over bar gap defect mode. By the calculation, the structure shows very sharp emissivity peak in a narrow wavelength band. The position of the emissivity peak can be effectively controlled by tuning the thickness of the defect layer. Due to the novel characteristics of the defect mode of zero-(n) over bar gap, this kind thermal emission is predicated to have promising radiative properties.