Tuning near field radiative heat flux through surface excitations with a   metal insulator transition
  The control of heat flow is a formidable challenge due to lack of good thermal insulators. Promising new oppor-tunities for heat flow control were recently theoretically discovered for radiative heat flow in near field, where large heat flow contrasts may be achieved by tuning electronic excitations on surfaces. Here we show experi-mentally that the phase transition of VO2 entails a change of surface polariton states that significantly affects radiative heat transfer in near field. In all cases the Derjaguin approximation correctly predicted radiative heat transfer in near field, but it underestimated the farfield limit. Our results indicate that heat flow contrasts can be realized in near field that can be larger than those obtained in farfield. 
P. J. van Zwol, L. Ranno, J. Chevrier
cond-mat.mes-hall