Engineering Thermal Emission with Enhanced Emissivity and Quality Factor Using Bound States in the Continuum and Electromagnetically Induced Absorption (Advanced Optical Materials 6/2026)

Metal-Based Thermal Emitters The figure shows a schematic of a metal-based thermal emitter that uses counter-propagating surface waves to create bound states in the continuum (BICs) and an electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) resonance. Together, these effects produce high-Q factors and strong directional thermal emission with stable emission spectra for varying temperature. The band structure in the upper-left panel highlights the coupling of three modes, forming a short flat band that results in highly directional emission. More details can be found in the Research Article by Justus C. Ndukaife and co-workers (DOI: 10.1002/adom.202501257).