Separation Gap Measurement

Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer between Macroscopic Planar Surfaces

Signals to the stepper motors, capacitance readouts, temperature readouts, and
current and voltages to the heater are all controlled and read by a LABVIEW
computer program. Each pair of capacitor plates is calibrated by taking
capacitance readings as the plates are driven together one step of the stepper
motors at a time. A fit is made to C=Ꜫ0*a/d + Cstray where Ꜫ0 is the dielectric
constant of the vacuum, a is the capacitor area, and Cstray is a parallel contribution
independent of separation. The data fit the equation above very well, with R 2
values greater than 0.999. The fitted value of a equals the metalized area within our
knowledge of this area: Cstray =0.4 pF. The average capacitance gives the
distance while the individual readings are used to correct the alignment by sending
steps to the motors controlling tip and tilt.
Near-field thermal radiation between doped silicon plates at nanoscale gaps

Real-time measurements of the capacitance between the source and the receiver
allowed us to estimate the vacuum gap width precisely. Because the MEMS-based
platform in the vacuum chamber is connected to a capacitance meter via a vacuum
feed-through, the capacitance measurement needs to be calibrated. Furthermore,
the simultaneous measurement of the electrical resistance and capacitance also
results in an additional increase in the measured capacitance due to the internal
capacitance of digital multimeters (DMMs). Consequently, the capacitance
measurement was calibrated with reference capacitors in a configuration
identical to that used in the actual experiment to obtain the following relationship:
Cmeasured = Cactual + Cparallel, where Cmeasured is the measured capacitance outside of the
vacuum chamber and Cactual is the actual capacitance of the device. The capacitance
Cparallel, containing the contribution of the parallel connection including the vacuum
feed-through and the internal capacitance of DMMs, was found to be 153 ±5 pF.
 Tailoring near-field thermal
radiation between metallo-dielectric

The vacuum gap distance and the curvature

(and parallelism) between the Metallo-
Dielectric emitter and the Metallo-
Dielectric receiver can be measured by
dividing the MD receiver into four
segments and measuring capacitances
between the MD emitter and each of the
MD receiver segments. Four local vacuum
gaps (denoted as d1, d2, d3, and d4) were
sequentially measured and the vertical shift
of each picomotor actuator was controlled
to align the MD emitter in parallel with the
MD receiver (i.e., d1 ≈ d4 and d2 ≈ d3). The
curvature (and parallelism) between the
MD emitter and the MD receiver can be
evaluated using a fitted curve of the four
local vacuum gaps.

multilayers using coupled surface

plasmon polaritons
The position of the emitter part is
controlled by the displacement of the
picomotor actuators. The receiver part is
fixed on the heat sink.
Super-Planckian Radiative Heat Transfer between Macroscale Surfaces with Vacuum
Gaps Down to 190 nm Directly Created by SU-8 Posts and Characterized by Capacitance
Method

Thin bonding wires were attached with silver paste onto the corner of the receiver sample surface
and onto the top copper plate, which was electrically connected to the emitter sample via carbon
tape for the gap capacitance measurement with a digital multimeter (Tektronix DMM4050). The
vacuum gap distance can be determined as d=ε0Agap/Cgap , where Cgap is the measured gap
capacitance, and Agap is the overlapping area. The gap distance error is considered as one
standard deviation of three independent measurements from three emitter− receiver pairs
prepared in the same fabrication batch. The gap distances obtained from capacitance
measurements matched with the heights of fabricated SU-8 posts measured by a profilometer
(i.e., 508, 356, and 205 nm, respectively). While the gap distance might be consistent with SU-8
heights at large spacing it is more reasonable to use the gap distance directly measured from
capacitance across the actual vacuum gap where the NFTR occurs between mounted emitter and
receiver samples, rather than to simply take the SU-8 heights from the profilometry to be the gap
distance in case of accidental wafer deformation and dust particles during sample mounting.