Thermophotovoltaic conversion efficiency measurement at high view factors

Abstract

A standardized method for measuring thermophotovoltaic (TPV) efficiency has not been yet established, which makes the reported results difficult to compare. Besides, most of the TPV efficiencies reported to date have been obtained using small view factors, i.e., large cell-to-emitter distances, so the impact of the series resistance is usually underestimated, and the optical cavity effects, i.e., the multiple reflections taking place between the emitter and the cell, are not accounted for experimentally. In this work, we present an experimental setup able to measure the TPV efficiency under high view factors (up to 0.98), by using small emitter-to-cell distances (< 1 mm). This allows a more accurate direct measurement of the TPV efficiency at higher power densities than previous works. As a result, a TPV efficiency of 26.4+-0.1 % and a power density of 4.3+-0.8 W/cm2 have been obtained for an InGaAs TPV cell with a back surface reflector irradiated by a graphite thermal emitter at 1592 C.