Episode 17: Metamaterial tailors thermal emission

MRS Bulletin Materials News Podcast

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Coskun Kocabas from The University of Manchester in the UK about his development of a metamaterial that can tailor thermal emission. Rather than using a periodic system, which most topological materials employ, his research team borrowed a concept from laser design and created an optical cavity using a dielectric medium sandwiched between two layers that act as mirrors: a metal substrate and a top layer of platinum. The top layer serves as a thermal emitter, and the thickness of the top layer defines the topological property that regulates thermal emissivity. This work was published in a recent issue of Science.