Key opportunities in near-field thermophotovoltaic systems
Georgia Papadakis (ICFO)
ABSTRACT:
Tailoring light-matter interactions in the nanoscale creates opportunities for converting heat, in the form of thermal radiation, into electricity, with thermophotovoltaic systems. In this lecture, using the principles of detailed balance, we will evaluate thermophotovoltaic systems in terms of their open-circuit voltage, and contrast them with standard solar photovoltaic cells. Hence, we will identify key opportunities for thermophotovoltaic energy conversion. We will further discuss how accessing the near-field allows for significant performance improvement in terms of both voltage and current characteristics, making near-field thermophotovoltaic systems a relevant solid-state and carbon-free future technology for low-grade waste heat recovery.
[1] G. T. Papadakis, M. Orenstein, E. Yablonovitch, S. Fan, “Thermodynamics of light management in near-field thermophotovoltaics”, arXiv:2107.10705 (2021)
[2] G. T. Papadakis, S. Buddhiraju, Z. Zhao, B. Zhao, S. Fan, “Broadening near-field emission for performance enhancement in thermophotovoltaics”, ACS Nano Lett. 20, 3 (2020)
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http://frontiers.icfo.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2107.10705.pdf
BIO:
Georgia earned her PhD from the California Institute of Technology, where she worked on the design of artificially composed media, called metamaterials, as well as the interaction of light with novel materials like graphene and two-dimensional semiconductors. After her PhD, she joined Stanford University as a TomKat Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainable Energy. Much of her work at Stanford has focused on radiative heat transfer in the near-field, pertaining to length scales in the nanometer-range. In this range, thermally excited photons carry large amounts of thermal power density, thus creating new opportunities in optical and thermal engineering. At ICFO, Georgia’s group aims at harnessing thermal radiation via controlling light-matter interactions at infrared frequencies, for the purpose of efficient light extraction and energy conversion.