| ELECTROMAGNETISM, OPTICS, ACOUSTICS, HEAT TRANSFER, CLASSICAL MECHANICS, AND FLUID DYNAMICS |
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Open thermal cloak based on active thermal metasurfaces |
| Bao-Quan Hou(侯宝泉)1, Fei Sun(孙非)1,†, Yi-Chao Liu(刘一超)1, Jia-Peng Wang(王嘉鹏)1, Ya-Ru Feng(冯亚茹)1, Bin-Zhao Cao(曹斌照)1, Hong-Ming Fei(费宏明)1, and Jie Wu(武洁)2 |
1 Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China;
2 Taiyuan University, Taiyuan 030000, China |
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Abstract The enclosed configuration of conventional thermal cloaks prevents the passage of matter across their boundaries. To overcome this limitation, we propose an open thermal cloak (OTC) that simultaneously provides effective thermal cloaking and incorporates a functional exit that allows unimpeded passage and exchange of matter. The OTC integrates a closed thermal cloak with an exit (CTCE) and a thermal shifter designed via coordinate transformation. The thermal shifter compensates for performance degradation caused by the exit by transferring the thermal regulation function of the removed segment back to the exit location, using a material with equivalent negative thermal conductivity derived from transformation thermotics. For practical implementation, this idealized material is replaced with discrete active thermal metasurfaces (ATMs) at the boundary to replicate the required heat flux conditions. Numerical simulations show that the ATM-based OTC exhibits excellent cloaking performance under varying heat flow directions and across exits of different sizes and shapes, maintaining background temperature field integrity and a near-uniform temperature distribution inside the protected region. The average temperature disturbance induced is significantly lower than that of CTCE and a directly exposed object, with performance approaching that of an ideal closed thermal cloak (CTC). This work breaks the enclosure limitation of traditional thermal cloaks and shows promise for infrared thermal protection of underground shelters and the thermal management of heat-sensitive electronics.
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Received: 17 December 2025
Revised: 04 February 2026
Accepted manuscript online: 23 February 2026
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PACS:
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44.10.+i
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(Heat conduction)
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44.90.+c
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(Other topics in heat transfer)
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81.05.Xj
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(Metamaterials for chiral, bianisotropic and other complex media)
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| Fund: This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12274317 and 12374277), the San Jin Talent Support Program — Shanxi Provincial Youth Top-notch Talent Project, the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (Grant No. 202303021211054), the Shanxi Province Higher Education Institutions Young Faculty Research and Innovation Support Program (Grant No. 2025Q006), and the College Student Innovation Project in Taiyuan University of Technology (Grant No. 20250164). |
Corresponding Authors:
Fei Sun
E-mail: sunfei@tyut.edu.cn
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Cite this article:
Bao-Quan Hou(侯宝泉), Fei Sun(孙非), Yi-Chao Liu(刘一超), Jia-Peng Wang(王嘉鹏), Ya-Ru Feng(冯亚茹), Bin-Zhao Cao(曹斌照), Hong-Ming Fei(费宏明), and Jie Wu(武洁) Open thermal cloak based on active thermal metasurfaces 2026 Chin. Phys. B 35 054401
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