Thermophotovoltaic efficiency of 40%

Alina LaPotin, Kevin L. Schulte, Myles A. Steiner, Kyle Buznitsky, Colin C. Kelsall, Daniel J. Friedman, Eric J. Tervo, Ryan M. France, Michelle R. Young, Andrew Rohskopf, Shomik Verma, Evelyn N. Wang and Asegun Henry ()
Additional contact information
Alina LaPotin: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kevin L. Schulte: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Myles A. Steiner: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Kyle Buznitsky: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Colin C. Kelsall: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel J. Friedman: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Eric J. Tervo: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Ryan M. France: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Michelle R. Young: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Andrew Rohskopf: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shomik Verma: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Evelyn N. Wang: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Asegun Henry: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature, 2022, vol. 604, issue 7905, 287-291

Abstract: Abstract Thermophotovoltaics (TPVs) convert predominantly infrared wavelength light to electricity via the photovoltaic effect, and can enable approaches to energy storage1,2 and conversion3–9 that use higher temperature heat sources than the turbines that are ubiquitous in electricity production today. Since the first demonstration of 29% efficient TPVs (Fig. 1a) using an integrated back surface reflector and a tungsten emitter at 2,000 °C (ref. 10), TPV fabrication and performance have improved11,12. However, despite predictions that TPV efficiencies can exceed 50% (refs. 11,13,14), the demonstrated efficiencies are still only as high as 32%, albeit at much lower temperatures below 1,300 °C (refs. 13–15). Here we report the fabrication and measurement of TPV cells with efficiencies of more than 40% and experimentally demonstrate the efficiency of high-bandgap tandem TPV cells. The TPV cells are two-junction devices comprising III–V materials with bandgaps between 1.0 and 1.4 eV that are optimized for emitter temperatures of 1,900–2,400 °C. The cells exploit the concept of band-edge spectral filtering to obtain high efficiency, using highly reflective back surface reflectors to reject unusable sub-bandgap radiation back to the emitter. A 1.4/1.2 eV device reached a maximum efficiency of (41.1 ± 1)% operating at a power density of 2.39 W cm–2 and an emitter temperature of 2,400 °C. A 1.2/1.0 eV device reached a maximum efficiency of (39.3 ± 1)% operating at a power density of 1.8 W cm–2 and an emitter temperature of 2,127 °C. These cells can be integrated into a TPV system for thermal energy grid storage to enable dispatchable renewable energy. This creates a pathway for thermal energy grid storage to reach sufficiently high efficiency and sufficiently low cost to enable decarbonization of the electricity grid.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04473-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:604:y:2022:i:7905:d:10.1038_s41586-022-04473-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04473-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().