The heat radiation emitted by a nanoparticle depends strongly on its environment. As for the spontaneous emission of atoms, the heat radiated by a nanoparticle changes tremendously when placing it close to a cold surface. This effect is due to the near-field interaction between the nanoparticle and the surface. This near-field interaction is sensitive to the geometry of the particle (that is, whether its shape is rice corn-like or pancake-like) and to that of the surface (also including surface roughness). In addition, it turns out that many-particle effects (configurational resonances) affect the heat flux between nanoparticles. For instance, the radiative heat flow between two nanoparticles can be controlled (increased and decreased) by introducing a third nanoparticle, due to such configurational resonances.

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  Near-field radiative heat transfer between a nanoparticle and a rough surface.
  Phys. Rev. B 81, 245414 (2010).
  arXiv:1103.2374v1
   
• Oliver Huth, Felix Rüting, Svend-Age Biehs, and Martin Holthaus:
  Shape-dependence of near-field heat transfer between a spheroidal nanoparticle and a flat surface.
  Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 50, 10603 (2010).
  arXiv:1103.5039v1
   
• Philippe Ben-Abdallah, Svend-Age Biehs, and Karl Joulain:
  Many-body radiative heat transfer theory.
  Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 114301 (2011).
  arXiv:1107.3646v1
   
• Maria Tschikin, Svend-Age Biehs, Philippe Ben-Abdallah, Felipe S. S. Rosa:
  Radiative cooling of nanoparticles close to a surface.
  Eur. Phys. J. B 85, 233 (2012).
  arXiv:1112.3470v2