High efficiency rare-earth emitter for thermophotovoltaic applications

‘Squeezing’ near-field thermal emission for ultra-efficient high-power thermophotovoltaic conversion

We numerically demonstrate near-field planar ThermoPhotoVoltaic systems with very high efficiency and output power, at large vacuum gaps. Example performances include: at 1200 °K emitter temperature, output power density 2 W/cm(2) with ~47% efficiency at 300 nm vacuum gap; at 2100 °K, 24 W/cm(2) with ~57% efficiency at 200 nm gap; and, at 3000 °K, 115 W/cm(2) with ~61% efficiency at 140 nm gap....

Unidirectional radiative heat transfer with a spectrally selective planar absorber/emitter for high-efficiency solar thermophotovoltaic systems

One –Dimensional Si/SiO2 Photonic Crystals Filter for Thermophotovoltaic Applications

In this paper, a one dimensional Si/SiO2 photonic crystals (1D-PhCs) is optimized for potential application as thermophotovoltaic (TPV) optical filter. The performance of the proposed structure, 1D eightlayer Si/SiO2 of thermophotovoltaic system, is studied. The effect of the thickness of layers, incidence angle and number of periods on the spectral reflectance has been investigated by rigorous...

A nanophotonic solar thermophotovoltaic device.

The most common approaches to generating power from sunlight are either photovoltaic, in which sunlight directly excites electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor, or solar-thermal, in which sunlight drives a mechanical heat engine. Photovoltaic power generation is intermittent and typically only exploits a portion of the solar spectrum efficiently, whereas the intrinsic irreversibilities of small...

Design of wide-angle selective absorbers/emitters with dielectric filled metallic photonic crystals for energy applications.

The design and simulation of a wide angle, spectrally selective absorber/emitter metallic photonic crystal (MPhC) is presented. By using dielectric filled cavities, the angular, spectrally selective absorption/emission of the MPhC is dramatically enhanced over an air filled design by minimizing diffraction losses. Theoretical analysis is performed and verified via rigorous coupled wave analysis...