Enhanced near-field radiative heat transfer between a nanosphere and a hyperbolic metamaterial mediated by coupled surface phonon polaritons

•Performance of the optimized design for multi-layered structure for heat exchange.•Heat exchange in tip-sample system is enhanced by hyperbolic multilayer structure.•Role of surface modes and Bloch mode to near-field heat transfer.•Coupled surface modes are restricted at the forbidden band of the Bloch mode.

We study the near-field radiative heat transfer between a silicon carbide (SiC) nanosphere and a SiC-SiO2 multi-layered hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) by means of fluctuational electrodynamics. Results show that the absorbed mean power at the volume resonant frequency of the SiC nanosphere is one order of magnitude stronger than that of bulk SiC medium. This enhancement of near-field radiative heat transfer is mediated by the coupled surface phonon polaritons at the forbidden region of the Bloch mode. Moreover, the forbidden region of the Bloch mode is tuned by the geometry structure of the multi-layered HMM and overlapped with the volume resonant frequency of the SiC nanosphere, thus generating stronger absorption.