Related papers: Ideal near-field thermophotovoltaic cells
Recently, near-field radiative heat transfer enhancement across nanometer vacuum gaps has been intensively studied between two hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) due to unlimited wavevectors and high photonic density of state. In this work, we…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
Thermophotovoltaics, devices that convert thermal infrared photons to electricity, offer a key pathway for a variety of critical renewable energy technologies including thermal energy storage, waste heat recovery, and direct solar-thermal…
Thermophotovoltaic devices are energy-conversion systems generating an electric current from the thermal photons radiated by a hot body. In far field, the efficiency of these systems is limited by the thermodynamic Schockley-Queisser limit…
A thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy converter harnesses thermal photons emitted by a hot body and converts them to electricity. When the radiative heat exchange between the emitter and PV cell is spectrally monochromatic, the TPV system can…
Near-field thermophotovoltaic systems functioning at 400$\sim$900~K based on graphene-hexagonal-boron-nitride heterostructures and thin-film InSb $p$-$n$ junctions are investigated theoretically. The performances of two near-field systems…
The performance of a near-field thermophotovoltaic system with a tandem-cell structure composed of thin-film p-doped GaSb and n-doped InAs sub-cells on a gold backside reflector is theoretically investigated. The temperatures of the…
We propose a near-field inelastic thermoelectric heat engine where quantum-dots are used to effectively rectify the charge flow of photo-carriers. The device converts near-field heat radiation into useful electrical power. Heat absorption…
Hot carrier solar cells allow potential efficiency close to the thermodynamical limit in ideal conditions. However, the feasability of such devices has not been clearly stated so far and only ideal cells were considered in previous studies.…
We evaluate near-field thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy conversion systems focusing in particular on their open-circuit voltage (Voc). Unlike previous analyses based largely on numerical simulations with fluctuational electrodynamics, here,…
A new approach is introduced to significantly improve the performance of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems by using low-dimensional thermal emitters and photovoltaic (PV) cells. By reducing the thickness of both the emitter and the PV cell,…
Thermophotovotaics convert thermal radiation from local heat sources to electricity. A new breakthrough in creating highly efficient thin-film solar cells can potentially enable thermophotovoltaic systems with unprecedented high efficiency.…
A p-n junction maintained at above ambient temperature can work as a heat engine, converting some of the supplied heat into electricity and rejecting entropy by interband emission. Such thermoradiative cells have potential to harvest…
The conventional notion for achieving high efficiency in thermophotovoltaics (TPVs) is to use a monochromatic emission at a photon energy corresponding to the band gap of the cell. Here, we prove theoretically that such a notion is only…
Heterostructures based on atomically thin semiconductors are considered a promising emerging technology for the realization of ultrathin and ultralight photovoltaic solar cells on flexible substrates. Much progress has been made in recent…
Near-field thermal radiation transfer overcoming the far-field blackbody limit has attracted significant attention in recent years owing to its potential for drastically increasing the output power and conversion efficiency of…
It is well known that performance of a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) device can be enhanced if the vacuum gap between the thermal emitter and the TPV cell becomes nanoscale due to the photon tunneling of evanescent waves. Having multiple…
Recent experimental studies on near-field thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy conversion have mainly focused on enhancing performance via photon tunneling of evanescent waves. In the sub-micron gap, however, there exist peculiar phenomena…
We propose a solar thermal energy conversion system consisting of a solar absorber, a thermoradiative cell or negative illumination photodiode, and a photovoltaic cell. Because it is a heat engine, this system can also be paired with…
In the close vicinity of a hot body, at distances smaller than the thermal wavelength, a high electromagnetic energy density exists due to the presence of evanescent fields radiated by the partial charges in motion around its surface. This…