Abstract
Commercial deployment of thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is lacking behind the implementation of solar PV technology due to limited thermal stability of the selective emitter structures. Most of the TPV emitters demonstrated so far are designed to operate under high vacuum conditions (~10−6 mbar vacuum pressure), whereas under medium vacuum conditions (~10−2 mbar vacuum pressure), which are feasible in technical implementations of TPV, these emitters suffer from oxidation due to significant O2 partial pressure. In this work, the thermal stability of 1D refractory W-HfO2 based multilayered metamaterial emitter structure is investigated under different vacuum conditions. The impact of the O2 partial pressure on thermal stability of the emitters is experimentally quantified. We show that, under medium vacuum conditions, i.e. ~10−2 mbar vacuum pressure, the emitter shows unprecedented thermal stability up to 1300 °C when the residual O2 in the annealing chamber is minimized by encapsulating the annealing chamber with Ar atmosphere. This study presents a significant step in the experimental implementation of high temperature stable emitters under medium vacuum conditions, and their potential in construction of economically viable TPV systems. The high TPV efficiency, ~50% spectral efficiency for GaSb PV cell at 1300 °C, and high temperature stability make this platform well suited for technical application in next-generation TPV systems.
Highlights
Commercial deployment of thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is lacking behind the implementation of solar PV technology due to limited thermal stability of the selective emitter structures
Multilayered 1D W-HfO2 based metamaterial structure is investigated for high temperature stability under 2×10−2 mbar vacuum conditions enclosed with argon gas atmosphere with 20 ppm residual oxygen. 1D metamaterial emitter shows exceptional thermal stability up to 1300 °C and to the best of our knowledge 1300 °C is the highest temperature reported for an emitter so far operating under medium vacuum condition
We have investigated the effect of residual O2 partial pressure on the thermal stability of the emitter structures at high temperatures
Summary
Commercial deployment of thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is lacking behind the implementation of solar PV technology due to limited thermal stability of the selective emitter structures. The highest temperature stability of structured thermal emitters of 1400 °C was achieved so far at high vacuum conditions[1,2], of 10−5-10−6 mbar vacuum pressure, with an application of turbomolecular pumps. These working conditions are economically not viable in the commercialization of TPV technology. At medium vacuum condition of 10−2 mbar, which can be achieved without turbomolecular pump, the thermal stability of metal-based emitters drastically decreases at high temperatures[1,7,26,36]. Multilayered 1D W-HfO2 based metamaterial structure is investigated for high temperature stability under 2×10−2 mbar vacuum conditions enclosed with argon gas atmosphere with 20 ppm residual oxygen. Presented 1D emitter exhibits a spectral TPV efficiency of 50% for GaSb PV cell with a bandgap of 0.72 eV
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