Design and Optical Simulation of a New Thermophotovoltaic System Based on Ta-Photnic Crystal Emitter and InAs Photovoltaic Cell

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Abstract

In this paper, design and optical simulation of a new thermophotovoltaic system is presented. In the proposed system, a Ta photonic crystal structure is used as an emitter section, and an InAs planar photovoltaic cell is used as absorber section. Based on the numerical simulation results, when the temperature of the emitter section is set at 1650k, the wavelength corresponding to the peak power transmission is around 1.7 micrometer, and the internal quantum efficiency will be optimum. For the temperature of 1650k, the internal quantum efficiency and the short circuit current of 77% and 62.5 mA/cm2 are achieved, respectively. The FDTD numerical method and analytical method (using of Matlab software) are used for optical simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed thermophotovoltaic system which contains the InAs planar photovoltaic cell, has a good performance as other state of art material (GaSb, InGaAsSb and InGaAs) and could well be used in solid-state energy conversion systems.

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Volume 9, Issue 2 - Serial Number 34
September 2018
Pages 29-36
  • Receive Date: 30 July 2017
  • Revise Date: 12 October 2018
  • Accept Date: 15 October 2018
  • First Publish Date: 15 October 2018