Amun passed PhD proposal defense

The proposed research aims to provide a complete understanding of extreme near-field thermal radiation by combining the sub-nm z -axis resolution of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) with optical detection of tip-scattering and thermal sensitivity of nanoheater/thermometer (NH/T) devices. Furthermore, to fundamentally understand how near-field radiation exchanges between the tip and underlying substrate, a closed-form model based on the finite dipole model is developed, which can be readily compared with experiments. This researchwill give novel insight to (1) the limit of fluctuational electrodynamics, (2) the sub-10 nm gap dependence of total and spectral near-field thermal radiation, (3) the transition from pure radiation to phonon conduction.