3D Thermal Cloaking

So I'm excited to speak to you about some very interesting work you have coming out of your lab, but I would like to start with kind of a concept definition.

What is thermal cloaking?

The thermal cloak is essentially about controlling the path of the heat.

So if we imagine placing an object in a uniform material, and we heat on one side, that object has a different thermal property from its surrounding.

It will disturb the heat flow.

So the temperature contour around it will bend, and that's how we know that there is something there if we use a thermal camera.

A thermal cloak will do something that's very different.

So basically, it will guide the heat around the protected region and then allow the heat to come back together at the other side.

So inside the cloak, the temperature field will look almost as if the object is never there.

In this case, I would like to describe it as building a c- a contour, uh, for the heat, and there are three very important features for this cloak to work.

So the first thing is, so if we think about there are two geometries.

One is the object being protected, the other one is the outside of the thermal cloak.

The first feature that's important is we are redirecting heat such that outside of the cloak region, if we use a thermal camera, we will not be able to see there is an object inside in the sense that the, the thermal contour is purely uniform.

So that's the one thing.

It, uh, serves as protecting the object being detected thermally.

The second feature is inside this, uh, cloak region, the temperature gradient is very uniform, and it's, uh, the temperature is very constant and undisturbed.

So in this case, it serves as a capability to protect whatever inside from being influenced by the external extreme heat or, or damage.

The third feature is that a real cloak has to be a cloak that works, doesn't matter where the heat comes from.

It's a universal cloak that works for infinite direction for the heat.

Mm-hmm.

So those three features come up with a, a actual thermal cloak.

So I think for the idea, a lot of us have seen media such as movies over the years where maybe it's in military applications, and they're using it to see, like, the people that are in a building, let's say.

So if you had your cloak, instead of being able to see the outline of the person in the building, it might just be it dissipates the heat in a way that they wouldn't be able to see that source.

Exactly.

So y- a very in-interesting, uh, point that you make is, uh, about the heat.