Large Area Near-Field Thermophotovoltaics for Low Temperature Applications.

ABSTRACT: 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 power generation. However, conventional far-field devices struggle to generate reasonable powers at lower temperatures. Near-field thermophotovoltaics provide a pathway to substantially higher powers by leveraging photon tunneling effects. Here a large area near-field thermophotovoltaic device is presented, created with an epitaxial co-fabrication approach, that consists of a self-supported 0.28 cm² emitter-cell pair with a 150 nm gap. The device generates 1.22 mW at 460 °C, a 25-fold increase over the same cell measured in a far-field configur

SUBMITTER: Selvidge J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11795708 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature