Keywords

thermophotovoltaics, rugate filter, MEEP, S4, simulation

Presentation Type

Event

Research Abstract

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power systems, which convert heat into electricity using a photovoltaic diode to collect thermal radiation, have attracted increasing attention in recent work. It has recently been proposed that new optical structures such as photonic crystals can significantly improve the efficiency of these devices in two ways. First, the electronic bandgap of the TPV diode should match the photonic bandgap of the emitter, in order to ensure that the majority of emitted photons can be converted. Second, a photonic crystal short-pass optical filter can be added to the front of the TPV diode to send long wavelength photons back to the hot emitter, which is known as photon recycling. This filter can consist of a quarter wave stack of two materials, or many materials blended together into a so-called rugate filter. Here we present a tool, freely available through nanoHUB.org that allows one to simulate and optimize TPV performance when using these components at a system level. A graphical user interface (GUI) was developed using the Rappture toolkit that allows one to specify the materials and the geometric structure of the selective emitter, filter, and TPV diode. This information is subsequently supplied to two simulations: a finite difference time-domain simulation, known as MEEP, which yields the thermal emission spectrum of the photonic structure; and a Fourier modal method simulation, known as S4, which outputs the filter spectrum. Finally, we explored a constrained range of design parameters to find optimal values that warrant further theoretical and experimental investigation.

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Thermophotovoltaic System Efficiency Simulation

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power systems, which convert heat into electricity using a photovoltaic diode to collect thermal radiation, have attracted increasing attention in recent work. It has recently been proposed that new optical structures such as photonic crystals can significantly improve the efficiency of these devices in two ways. First, the electronic bandgap of the TPV diode should match the photonic bandgap of the emitter, in order to ensure that the majority of emitted photons can be converted. Second, a photonic crystal short-pass optical filter can be added to the front of the TPV diode to send long wavelength photons back to the hot emitter, which is known as photon recycling. This filter can consist of a quarter wave stack of two materials, or many materials blended together into a so-called rugate filter. Here we present a tool, freely available through nanoHUB.org that allows one to simulate and optimize TPV performance when using these components at a system level. A graphical user interface (GUI) was developed using the Rappture toolkit that allows one to specify the materials and the geometric structure of the selective emitter, filter, and TPV diode. This information is subsequently supplied to two simulations: a finite difference time-domain simulation, known as MEEP, which yields the thermal emission spectrum of the photonic structure; and a Fourier modal method simulation, known as S4, which outputs the filter spectrum. Finally, we explored a constrained range of design parameters to find optimal values that warrant further theoretical and experimental investigation.