Related papers: Hot Electron Dynamics in Plasmonic Thermionic Emit…
Electric power may, in principle, be generated in a highly efficient manner from heat created by focused solar irradiation, chemical combustion, or nuclear decay by means of thermionic energy conversion. As the conversion efficiency of the…
Solid-state heat-to-electrical power converters are thermodynamic engines that use fundamental particles, such as electrons or photons, as working fluids. Virtually all commercially available devices are thermoelectric generators, in which…
Localized plasmons formed in ultrathin metallic nanogaps can lead to robust absorption of incident light. Plasmonic metasurfaces based on this effect can efficiently generate energetic charge carriers, also known as hot electrons, owing to…
Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) using nano materials is an emerging field of research. Graphene can stand high temperature as high as 4600 K in vacuum. Its work function can be engineered from its high value (for monolayer/bilayer) 4.6…
Above-threshold light emission from plasmonic tunnel junctions, when emitted photons have energies significantly higher than the energy scale of the incident electrons, has attracted much recent interest in nano-optics, while the underlying…
Thermionic emission has been exploited to give rise to the theory of thermionic cooling also known as electron transpiration cooling, which can potentially serve as a powerful and engineerable cooling mode for hypersonic leading edges that…
Conventional thermionic power generators and refrigerators utilize a barrier in the direction of transport to selectively transmit high-energy electrons. Here we show that the energy spectrum of electrons transmitted in this way is not…
Contemporary models of bounded plasmas assume that the target plasma electron temperature far exceeds the temperature of the cold electrons emitted from the target, T_emit. We show that when the sheath facing a collisional plasma becomes…
We describe a strategy for conversion of optical power into DC electrical power using resonant absorption in plasmonic nanostructures. A thermodynamic analysis of the underlying mechanism motivates our description of the phenomenon, which…
When plasmonic nanoparticles are coupled with semiconductors, highly energetic hot carriers can be extracted from the metal-semiconductor interface for various applications in light energy conversion. Hot charge-carrier extraction upon…
Thermionics and thermophotovoltaics are solid-state technologies that convert high-temperature heat into electricity by utilizing fundamental particles, electrons in thermionics and photons in thermophotovoltaics, as energy carriers. Both…
This work investigates an alternative to thermophotovoltaics for harvesting thermal and optical energy via photon coupling and thermionic energy conversion. In this device, a heat source is radiatively coupled to a thermionic electron…
Understanding the interplay between illumination and the electron distribution in metallic nanostructures is a crucial step towards developing applications such as plasmonic photo-catalysis for green fuels, nano-scale photo-detection and…
In numerous applications of energy harvesting via transformation of light into heat the focus recently shifted towards highly absorptive materials featuring nanoplasmons. It is currently established that noble metals-based absorptive…
Heat is an inevitable outcome in energy consumption processes, as more than 65% of input energy is wasted as heat. If we can generate electricity from waste heat, it will help minimize the needs for fossil fuels in power plants and can…
Thermophotovoltaic systems in principle enable utilization of heat that is usually regarded as wasted energy. However, the wavelength selectivity of the thermal emitter required for high efficiencies is rather difficult to control with…
Recent success in synthesizing thermally stable nanofluids at low costs is a significant breakthrough in the evolution of volumetric absorption based solar thermal systems. However, we have yet not been able to clearly identify the range of…
Advances in solid-state device design now allow the spectrum of transmitted electrons in thermionic and thermoelectric devices to be engineered in ways that were not previously possible. Here we show that the shape of the electron energy…
We are designing and fabricating two new thermionic sources of magnetized electrons for use in the electron lens project at the Integrable Optics Test Accelerator (IOTA) at Fermilab. These electron sources will be used for cooling of 2.5…
Effective thermal management at variable and extreme temperatures face limitations for the development of novel energy and aerospace applications. Plasmonic approaches, shown to be capable of tailoring black-body emission, could be…