Design of active
thermal cloak. (a) Multiple TE components are arranged around the air
hole with equal
distance on the Carbon Steel plate. Blue TE components absorb incident
thermal flux while
red ones release heat back to the plate. In the demonstration, heat flows
from bottom to
top. As a result, grey TE components can stay inactive as they do not
absorb or release
heat, but they can be activated if heat flows in other directions. (b)...
(September 21, 2015) Thermal
cloaking, as an ultimate thermal “illusion” phenomenon, is the result of
advanced heat manipulation with thermal metamaterials—heat can be guided around
a hidden object smoothly without disturbing the ambient thermal environment.
However, all previous thermal metamaterial cloaks were passive devices, lacking
the functionality of switching on/off and the flexibility of changing geometries.
In this letter, we report an active thermal cloaking device that is
controllable. Different from previous thermal cloaking approaches, this thermal
cloak adopts active thermoelectric components to “pump” heat from one side to
the other side of the hidden object, in a process controlled by input electric
voltages. Our work not only incorporates active components in thermal cloaking
but also provides controllable functionality in thermal metamaterials that can
be used to construct more flexible thermal devices.