Thermal field manipulation via a two-phase thermal metamaterial

Abstract Conventional methods for manipulating heat flow are restricted by a trade-off between tunable capability and efficient thermal conductivity. Herein, we report a novel method to manipulate thermal fields by using a reconfigurable two-phase thermal metamaterial composed of a translucent liquid and controllable micro magnetic particles. The thermal behavior as a function of the components of two-phase media is predicted on the basis of coupled radiative and conductive theory. The response of the thermal field can be efficiently tuned by the radial distribution of discrete microparticles. Precise and reconfigurable thermal coding/decoding information transmission is demonstrated by using multiple thermal particles regulating units. Our work should lead to the development of platforms for manipulating physical fields with multi-scale and multi-domain applications, which can be analogized to optics and acoustics. This work pioneers physical manipulations and should aid in the development of smart functional devices with micromanipulators for multiple physical environments.