ABSTRACT
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 low-grade heat into electricity. By analyzing the entropy content of different spectral components of thermal radiation, we identify an approach to increase the efficiency of thermoradiative cells via spectrally selecting long-wavelength photons for radiative exchange. Furthermore, we predict that the near-field photon extraction by coupling photons generated from interband electronic transition to phonon polariton modes on the surface of a heat sink can increase the conversion efficiency as well as the power generation density, providing more opportunities to efficiently utilize terrestrial emission for clean energy. An ideal InSb thermoradiative cell can achieve a maximum efficiency and power density up to 20.4% and 327 Wm-2, respectively, between a hot source at 500 K and a cold sink at 300 K. However, sub-bandgap and non-radiative losses will significantly degrade the cell performance.
ABSTRACT
A new approach is introduced to significantly improve the performance of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems using low-dimensional thermal emitters and photovoltaic (PV) cells. By reducing the thickness of both the emitter and the PV cell, strong spectral selectivity in thermal emission and absorption can be achieved by confining photons in trapped waveguide modes inside the thin-films that act as thermal analogs to quantum wells. Simultaneously, photo-excited carriers travel shorter distances across the thin-films reducing bulk recombination losses resulting in a lower saturation current in the PV cell. We predict a TPV efficiency enhancement with near-field coupling between the thermal emitter and the PV cell up to 38.7% using a thin-film germanium (Ge) emitter at 1000 K and an ultra-thin gallium antimonide (GaSb) cell supported by perfect back reflectors separated by 100 nm. Even in the far-field limit, the efficiency is predicted to reach 31.5%, which is over an order of magnitude higher than the Shockley Queisser limit of 1.6% for a bulk GaSb cell and a blackbody emitter at 1000 K. The proposed design approach does not require nanoscale patterning of the emitter and PV cell surfaces, but instead offers a simple low-cost solution to improve the performance of thermophotovoltaic systems.
ABSTRACT
Microfabricated cantilever beams have been used in microelectromechanical systems for a variety of sensor and actuator applications. Bimorph cantilevers accurately measure temperature change and heat flux with resolutions several orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional sensors such as thermocouples, semiconductor diodes, as well as resistance and infrared thermometers. The use of traditional cantilevers, however, entails a series of important measurement limitations, because their interactions with the sample and surroundings often create parasitic deflection forces and the typical metal layer degrades the thermal sensitivity of the cantilever. The paper introduces a design to address these issues by decoupling the sample and detector section of the cantilever, along with a thermomechanical model, the fabrication, system integration, and characterization. The custom-designed bi-arm cantilever is over one order of magnitude more sensitive than current commercial cantilevers due to the significantly reduced thermal conductance of the cantilever sample arm. The rigid and immobile sample section offers measurement versatility ranging from photothermal absorption, near-field thermal radiation down to contact, conduction, and material thermal characterization measurements in nearly identical configurations.
