Unconventional thermal cloak hiding an object outside the cloak

¹ Department of Applied Physics, School of Science, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University - Shanghai 201209, China
² Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, and Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Fudan University - Shanghai 200433, China

^(a) jphuang@fudan.edu.cn

Received: 16 October 2013
Accepted: 15 November 2013

Abstract

All the thermal cloaks reported in the literature can be used to thermally hide an object inside the cloak. However, a common limitation of this kind of thermal cloaks is that the cloaked object cannot feel the external heat flow since it is located inside the cloak; thus we call these cloaks “conventional thermal cloaks”. Here we manage to overcome this limitation by exploiting a class of unconventional thermal cloaks that enable the cloaked object to feel the external heat flow. Our finite-element simulations in two dimensions show the desired cloaking effect. The underlying mechanism originates from the complementary effect of thermal metamaterials with negative thermal conductivities. This work suggests a different method to design thermal devices where heat conduction can be controlled at will.