Permittivity-Based Control of Thermal Runaway in a Triple-Layer Laminate

The use of heat exchangers to harness microwave energy has great potential in transmitting and collecting beamed energy through space. We consider a simple three-layer laminate model in which a middle layer characterized by a temperature-dependent loss factor is surrounded by two lossless dielectric layers. It is shown that when plane waves symmetrically impinge the laminate at normal incidence conditions analogous to Bragg interference occur for a fixed loss factor in the middle layer. For the loss factor depending on temperature, we find a new stable steady-state solution corresponding to resonance conditions, whose equilibrium temperature is significantly elevated but prevents the onset of thermal runaway. The impact of this result on transferring harnessed microwave energy to other media is discussed.