Related papers: Harnessing near-field thermal photons with efficie…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
This article proposes a new energy harvesting concept that greatly enhances thermionic power generation with high e ciency by exploiting the near- field enhancement of thermal radiation. The proposed near-field enhanced thermionic energy…
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…
Graphene---hexagonal-boron-nitride---InSb near-field structures are designed and optimized to enhance the output power and energy efficiency of the thermophotovoltaic systems working in the temperature range of common industrial waste heat,…
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…
Although near-field radiative heat transfer was introduced in the 1950's, interest in the field has recently revived, as the effect promises improved performance in various applications where contactless temperature regulation in the…
Transferring energy without transferring mass is a powerful paradigm to address the challenges faced when the access to, or the deployment of, the infrastructure for energy conversion is locally impossible or impractical. Laser beaming…
We ask the question, what are the ideal characteristics of a near-field thermophotovoltaic cell? Our search leads us to a reformulation of near-field radiative heat transfer in terms of the joint density of electronic states of the…
The energy transferred via thermal radiation between two surfaces separated by nanometers distances (near-field) can be much larger than the blackbody limit. However, realizing a reconfigurable platform that utilizes this energy exchange…
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…
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,…
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…