Advanced Nanofabrication of Thermal Emission Devices

Nanofabricated thermal emission devices can be used to modify and modulate blackbody thermal radia-tion. There are many areas in which altering thermal radiation is extremely useful, especially in static power conversion, lighting and sensor applications. Two specific thermal emission devices which show great promise include resonant thermal emitters and selective thermal emitters. It has been found from theory that resonant thermal emitters exhibit quasi-monochromatic and partially coherent thermal emis-sion when fabricated with a 2-dimensional photonic crystal structure in a high-dielectric low-absorption material such as silicon. This type of fabricated resonant thermal emitter has great potential for use as near-IR and IR sensors. Theory has also shown that selective thermal emitters fabricated in tungsten with a 2-dimensional photonic crystal structure can exhibit spectrally selective thermal emission. This type of fabricated selective thermal emitter can be used to increase the efficiency of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems by preventing the incident thermal radiation below the band-gap of the PV diode from reaching the PV diode. This thesis explores the nanofabrication of a 2-dimensional photonic crystal silicon-on-sapphire (SOS