Thermophotovoltaics (TPVs) differs from solar photovoltaics (PV) because pairwise efficiency and electrical power cannot be optimized simultaneously, as a consequence of spectral selectivity or photon recycling. A review of around thirty experiments conducted so far is carried out, and the achieved performances are compared with those obtained in the detailed balance limit. The link between optimal cell bandgap and emitter temperature is highlighted as a function of out-of-band radiation exchange between the emitter and the cell. The analysis reveals that almost all the experimental data reported are far from power-maximizing conditions and more focused on optimizing efficiency. At high temperature, thermal management is obviously an issue and optimizing efficiency is required to minimize heat generation. In general, it is argued that in addition to pairwise efficiency and electrical power density, heat power density is a third metric that should be considered in the design of TPV devices.
Very-low bandgap thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells (with ~0.25 eV bandgap) aiming at harvesting photons from the mid-infrared spectrum, have yet to operate at ambient temperature. Often requiring cooling down to 100K, the power consumption for maintaining such temperature can be treated as swimming against the efficiency tide. We propose in this study to adapt infrared photodetectors based on Ga-free type-II InAs/InAsSb superlattice (T2SL) barrier structure, into TPV cells, and assess their performances. Such structures have already demonstrated higher operating temperature as photodetectors, and could give promising results similar to existing devices based on InAs/GaSb T2SL while getting rid of Ga-native defects problematics.
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