Abstract
The investigation on the effect of illumination power intensities for a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) system is crucial to enhance the TPV cell performance. To date, the studies on the effect of illumination intensities were limited to solar photovoltaic cells application. Meanwhile, the reported work on the impact of infrared illumination intensities on TPV cells are done at limited temperatures and intensities. The effects of TPV intensities on all performance parameters are not comprehensively studied and fully elucidated. Therefore, this paper investigates the performance of indirect-bandgap Germanium (Ge) and direct-bandgap Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs) cells under various TPV spectral irradiances. Silvaco TCAD simulation software was used to investigate the effect of blackbody temperatures ranging from 800 to 2000 K with different illumination intensities on the TPV cell performances. It was found that higher conversion efficiencies are achieved for both TPV cells under higher illumination intensities due to the increase in open-circuit voltage and fill factor. As the beam intensity increases for temperatures >1600 K, fill factor slowly increases for the Ge cell, but decreases for the InGaAs cell due to the increase in the $I^{2}R_{s}$ losses associated with the high current. The finding demonstrates that the open-circuit voltage of indirect-bandgap TPV cell is significantly increased with higher illumination intensities. The variations in cells performance are explicitly explained based on factors such as TPV design structure and the physical properties of semiconductor at varying illumination intensities. The performance of both TPV cells were also analyzed at the minimum optical losses. Average efficiencies of Ge and InGaAs TPV cells were increased to 26.05% and 27.92%, respectively, when the optical losses were minimized with anti-reflection coating and thicker absorber layer. The results of this work demonstrate that by detailed consideration of the effect of spectral irradiances, a high-performance TPV system can be developed.
Highlights
Over the past decades, thermophotovoltaic (TPV) system has emerged as a promising technology for the energy conversion of thermal radiations such as fuel combustion, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Leo Spiekman
This study investigates the performance of indirect (Ge) and direct (InGaAs) narrower bandgap (NB) semiconductor materials as a function of TPV illumination intensity
EFFECT OF DIFFERENT SPECTRAL IRRADIANCES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF GE AND INGAAS TPV CELLS Different illumination intensities would give a significant impact on the cell performance parameters such as Jsc, Voc, fill factor (FF), η, Rs, and Rsh [26]
Summary
Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) system has emerged as a promising technology for the energy conversion of thermal radiations such as fuel combustion, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Leo Spiekman .waste heat recovery, and nuclear energy, into electricity. Different illumination intensity may influence the amount of photo-generated current density and has a significant impact on the cell performance parameters, such as open-circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor (FF) and cell conversion efficiency (η) [25], [26].
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