Contactless Thermotronics with Photons (Orale)
Résumé
The next-generation of the “internet of things” has the potential to change the way people and systems live in a world of massive and disparate data sources, and to provide opportunities for connectivity at different scales. Instead of using electrical signals, purely thermal signals could be used. The development of such technology requires the existence of thermal analogs of basic electronic building elements such as transistors, memories and logic gates which work with heat flow rather than with electronic currents.
An important step forward in this direction has been carried out in 2006 by Baowen Li and his co-workers [1] who have introduced phononic analogs of electronics devices. However, this transport of heat with phonons in solid networks suffers from some weaknesses of fundamental nature which intrinsically limit its performances. One of these limitations is linked to the speed of acoustic phonons itself which is limited by the speed of sound in solids.
In this presentation we will discuss the possibility to develop, radiative analogs of fundamental building blocks for controlling the flow of heat with thermal photons, instead of the flow of phonons.
After describing the operating mode of radiative transistor which have been recently introduced [2] we will describe a mechanism of thermal bistability [3] which is at the origin of the very first radiative memory. Next, we will show the possibility to develop, contactless thermal logic gates [4] to process heat flows with thermal photons using complex architectures.