Photonic crystal enhanced silicon cell based thermophotovoltaic systems

Yeng, Yi Xiang; Chan, Walker R.; Rinnerbauer, Veronika; Stelmakh, Veronika; Senkevich, Jay J.; Joannopoulos, John D.; Soljacic, Marin; Celanovic, Ivan

doi:10.1364/OE.23.00A157

Title: Photonic crystal enhanced silicon cell based thermophotovoltaic systems

Journal Article · Fri Jan 30 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Optics Express

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.00A157· OSTI ID:1193631

Yeng, Yi Xiang ^[1]; Chan, Walker R. ^[1]; Rinnerbauer, Veronika ^[2]; Stelmakh, Veronika ^[1]; Senkevich, Jay J. ^[1]; Joannopoulos, John D. ^[1]; Soljacic, Marin ^[1]; Celanovic, Ivan ^[1]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Johannes Kepler Univ., Linz (Austria)

Here, we report the design, optimization, and experimental results of large area commercial silicon solar cell based thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy conversion systems. Using global non-linear optimization tools, we demonstrate theoretically a maximum radiative heat-to-electricity efficiency of 6.4% and a corresponding output electrical power density of 0.39 W cm⁻² at temperature T = 1660 K when implementing both the optimized two-dimensional (2D) tantalum photonic crystal (PhC) selective emitter, and the optimized 1D tantalum pentoxide – silicon dioxide PhC cold-side selective filter. In addition, we have developed an experimental large area TPV test setup that enables accurate measurement of radiative heat-to-electricity efficiency for any emitter-filter-TPV cell combination of interest. In fact, the experimental results match extremely well with predictions of our numerical models. Our experimental setup achieved a maximum output electrical power density of 0.10W cm⁻² and radiative heat-to-electricity efficiency of 1.18% at T = 1380 K using commercial wafer size back-contacted silicon solar cells.

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Research Organization:: Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577

OSTI ID:: 1193631

Journal Information:: Optics Express, Vol. 23, Issue 3; ISSN 1094-4087

Publisher:: Optical Society of America (OSA)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 18 works

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Selective emitters for thermophotovoltaic applications: Selective emitters for TPV applications Pfiester, Nicole A.; Vandervelde, Thomas E. physica status solidi (a), Vol. 214, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1002/pssa.201600410	journal	November 2016
Spectral narrowing of sub-bandgap absorbance and emissivity in highly doped silicon Li, Zhe; Zhang, Yan; Peng, Hao Materials Research Express, Vol. 6, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1591/ab637d	journal	December 2019
Near-infrared–to–visible highly selective thermal emitters based on an intrinsic semiconductor Asano, Takashi; Suemitsu, Masahiro; Hashimoto, Kohei Science Advances, Vol. 2, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600499	journal	December 2016

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