Enhanced low-gap thermo-photovoltaic cell efficiency for a wide range temperature based on a selective meta-material emitter-In Solar Energy
- Publication Type
- Original research
- Authors
- Fathi Bendelala1
- Ali Cheknane
- Hikmat S. Hilal
The concept of thermophotovoltaic system, based on a compact selective meta-material film structure acting as a selector thermal blackbody radiation emitter, is presented. The meta-material (MTM) film exhibits broad-band thermal radiation absorption with selective narrow-band thermal infrared emission, and can thus be efficiently coupled to a tandem (InAs/GaInAsSb) thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell based on experimental sub-cells data. The TPV tandem cell combined with the selective emitter achieves highest TPV conversion efficiency of 41% for black body radiation temperature (TBB) = 1500 ºC, and lowest TPV conversion efficiency of 11.82% for TBB=300 ºC. The TPV combined system thus operates in wide temperature range of 300 ºC to 1500 ºC, and the combined system shows higher performance when the MTM film is included. It also shows much higher performance than literature values reported for GaSb/GaInAsSb tandem thermophotovoltaic cells having no MTM film.
- Title
- Solar Energy
- Publisher
- International Solar Energy Society -Elsevier
- Publisher Country
- Germany
- Indexing
- Thomson Reuters
- Impact Factor
- 4.372
- Publication Type
- Prtinted only
- Volume
- 174
- Year
- 2018
- Pages
- 1053-1057