Related papers: Solar Thermoradiative-Photovoltaic Energy Conversi…
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.…
Hot-carrier solar cells are envisioned to utilize energy filtering to extract power from photogenerated electron-hole pairs before they thermalize with the lattice, and thus potentially offer higher power conversion efficiency compared to…
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…
Concentrating solar power, particularly parabolic trough system with solar concentrations less than 50, requires spectrally selective solar absorbers that are thermally stable at high temperatures of 400degC above to achieve high…
Improving the conversion efficiency of solar energy to electricity is most important to mankind. For single-junction photovoltaic solar-cells, the Shockley-Queisser thermodynamic efficiency limit is extensively due to the heat dissipation,…
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…
We develop a new approach to calculate the obtainable limit of photoconversion efficiency of tandem solar cells (SCs) and applied it to SCs with both vertical and lateral designs at AM0 and AM1.5 conditions. To get the maximum efficiency,…
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…
Single-junction photovoltaic cells are considered to be efficient solar energy converters, but even ideal cells cannot exceed the their fundamental thermodynamic efficiency limit, first analysed by Shockley and Queisser (SQ). For moderated…
Solar cell thermal recovery is recently attracting more and more attention in the research community as a viable solution to increase photovoltaic efficiency. However the convenience of the implementation of such strategy is bound to the…
Energy harvesting from sun and outer space using thermoradiative devices (TRD), despite being promising renewable energy sources, are limited only to daytime and nighttime period, respectively. A system with 24-hour continuous energy…
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.…
For commercial one-sun solar modules, up to 80% of the incoming sunlight may be dissipated as heat, potentially raising the temperature 20 C - 30 C higher than the ambient. In the long term, extreme self-heating erodes efficiency and…
We propose a concentrated thermionic emission solar cell design, which demonstrates a high solar-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency larger than 10\% under 600 sun, by harnessing the exceptional electrical, thermal and radiative…
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…
We present a comprehensive analysis of a dual, micro-gap thermionic-thermoelectric hybrid energy converter by developing a detailed theoretical model of the system. The Space-charge and near-field effects in thermionic conversion and the…
This paper firstly presents the concept of using dual laser beam to irradiate the photovoltaic cell, so as to investigate the temperature dependency of the efficiency of long distance energy transmission. Next, the model on the multiple…
Solar energy is clean and renewable but has a low flux density. The lack of a continuous and reliable power supply reduces their average daily output. Since the infrared part is not utilized to produce electricity, conventional photovoltaic…
Parabolic trough mirror plants are a popular design for the conversion of solar energy to electricity via thermal processes. The absorber of concentrated solar radiation can reach high temperatures (> 500 degrees Celsius) and is responsible…
We report a low cost and scalable method to synthesize solar selective nanofluids from 'used engine oil'. The as-prepared nanofluids exhibit excellent long-term stability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency. Moreover, these were found…