Adaptive Radiative Thermal Camouflage via Synchronous Heat Conduction

The advent of transformation thermotics has seen a boom in development of thermal metamaterials with a variety of thermal functionalities, including phenomena such as thermal cloaking and camouflage. However, most thermal metamaterials-based camouflage devices only tune in-plane heat conduction, which may fail to conceal a target from out-of-plane detection. We propose an adaptive radiative thermal camouflage via tuning out-of-plane transient heat conduction, and it is validated by both simulation and experiment. The physics underlying the performance of our adaptive thermal camouflage is based on real-time synchronous heat conduction through the camouflage device and the background plate, respectively. The proposed concept and device represent a promising new approach to fabrication of conductive thermal metamaterials, providing a feasible and effective way to achieve adaptive thermal camouflage.