High-temperature stability and selective thermal emission of polycrystalline tantalum photonic crystals

Rinnerbauer, Veronika; Yeng, Yi Xiang; Chan, Walker R.; Senkevich, Jay J.; Joannopoulos, John D.; Soljačić, Marin; Čelanović, Ivan

doi:10.1364/oe.21.011482

Cited by 151 publications

(118 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…However, thermal emission tailoring at elevated temperatures (>1000K) remains exceedingly difficult [14][15][16][17][18] . Here, we address this challenge by coupling the hot emitter with a cold-side nanophotonic interference system.…”

Section: Radiation From Very Hot Objects (Such As the Sun And Incandementioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring high-temperature radiation and the resurrection of the incandescent source

et al. 2016

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Radiation from very hot objects (such as the Sun and incandescent light-bulbs) is of tremendousutility, yet a large fraction of the radiated energy is wasted: for example, in solar cells, the mismatch between the Sun's spectrum and the cell's absorption profile limits efficiency 1 ; in incandescent light-bulbs, most of the energy is lost as heat 2 . For moderate temperatures, shaping thermal emission is possible through wavelength-selective radiators such as photonic crystals 3-13 .However, thermal emission tailoring at elevated temperatures (>1000K) remains exceedingly difficult [14][15][16][17][18] . Here, we address this challenge by coupling the hot emitter with a cold-side nanophotonic interference system. In particular, we show that a plain incandescent (3000K) filament, surrounded by an interference system uniquely optimized to reflect infrared and transmit visible light for all angles, becomes a light source that reaches luminous efficiencies close to the limit for lighting applications (~40%), surpassing all existing lighting technologies. In an experimental proof-of-concept, we demonstrate efficiency approaching that of commercial fluorescent or LED bulbs, but with exceptional reproduction of colors and high and scalable power. These results showcase the potential of spectral tailoring and enable a new high-temperature frontier in optics, with applications in thermophotovoltaic energy conversion 3-5 and lighting.2 Consider a thermal emitter of emissivity sandwiched between two identical structures of reflectance R(λ) and transmittance T(λ), separated by a small gap, as shown in Fig. 1c. In general, the emissivity of a high temperature emitter depends on temperature and wavelength.Such an emitter can be made of uniform, un-patterned, bulk material (e.g. refractory metals such as tungsten or tantalum), but can also be a photonic crystal with wavelength-selective emission properties. Similarly, in the simplest form, the filtering structure is a layered stack of materials of different refractive index, but can also be a 2-dimensional or a 3-dimensional photonic crystal.By tracing the reflected radiation in the cavity surrounding the emitter, we show (see Supplementary Discussion) that the effective emissivity of this emitter-tailoring-structure system can be expressed as (1) where is the original emissivity of the thermal emitter and F is the view factor characteristic to the geometry. The view factor equals the proportion of the radiation leaving the emitter that is intercepted by the enclosing surface. Expression (1) highlights the potential to tailor thermal emission by designing the surrounding cold-side structure properties. In such a manner, the radiation spectrum of extremely high temperature emitters can be modified without the need for any structural patterning of the emitter surface. The cavity effect due to the surrounding structure results in a portion of the power emitted at unwanted wavelengths to be reabsorbed by the thermal emitter. Applying a similar analysis as before and using Kirchoff's...

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Section: Radiation From Very Hot Objects (Such As the Sun And Incandementioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring high-temperature radiation and the resurrection of the incandescent source

et al. 2016

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“…For plasmonic absorbers and 2D or 3D PhCs, the slightly higher thermal emittance decreases their thermal transfer efficiencies at high temperatures. It is also relatively more challenging to fabricate plasmonic absorbers and 2D or 3D PhCs that are durable for high temperature operations [33,34]. Other types of selective solar absorbers that have been previously considered in the literature, but are not explored here in detail, include textured absorbers [35][36][37][38] and intrinsic absorber materials [36,[38][39][40].…”

Section: Selective Solar Absorbermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Experiments have shown that nano-and microstructures degrade under high temperature exposure for long times [148][149][150][151]. Different mechanisms can lead to such degradation, including chemical reactions [33,70,150], recrystallization [34,148] and surface diffusion [152,153]. These structural degradation processes could eventually remove the fine features of the structure.…”

Section: Packaging For Commercial Deploymentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar thermophotovoltaics: reshaping the solar spectrum

et al. 2016

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Abstract:Recently, there has been increasing interest in utilizing solar thermophotovoltaics (STPV) to convert sunlight into electricity, given their potential to exceed the Shockley-Queisser limit. Encouragingly, there have also been several recent demonstrations of improved systemlevel efficiency as high as 6.2%. In this work, we review prior work in the field, with particular emphasis on the role of several key principles in their experimental operation, performance, and reliability. In particular, for the problem of designing selective solar absorbers, we consider the trade-off between solar absorption and thermal losses, particularly radiative and convective mechanisms. For the selective thermal emitters, we consider the tradeoff between emission at critical wavelengths and parasitic losses. Then for the thermophotovoltaic (TPV) diodes, we consider the trade-off between increasing the potential short-circuit current, and maintaining a reasonable opencircuit voltage. This treatment parallels the historic development of the field, but also connects early insights with recent developments in adjacent fields. With these various components connecting in multiple ways, a system-level end-to-end modeling approach is necessary for a comprehensive understanding and appropriate improvement of STPV systems. This approach will ultimately allow researchers to design STPV systems capable of exceeding recently demonstrated efficiency values.

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“…1 Several materials have been proposed for selective emission, including plasmonic metamaterials, 2-4 refractory plasmonic structures, 5 rare earth materials, [6][7][8] and photonic crystals (PhCs). [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] However, realistic selective emitters still have residual low energy emission near the bandgap that can considerably limit the conversion efficiency. Significant improvement can be achieved by the use of cold-side PhC filters, including plasma filters, quarter-wave stacks, 25 and rugate filters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…40 Further, the IPSE is relatively amenable to fabrication in the near term, with key features already achieved in previous experimental work. [20][21][22]25,26 2 Design of the Integrated Photonic Crystal Selective Emitter…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated photonic crystal selective emitter for thermophotovoltaics

2016

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Abstract. Converting blackbody thermal radiation to electricity via thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is inherently inefficient. Photon recycling using cold-side filters offers potentially improved performance but requires extremely close spacing between the thermal emitter and the receiver, namely a high view factor. Here, we propose an alternative approach for thermal energy conversion, the use of an integrated photonic crystal selective emitter (IPSE), which combines twodimensional photonic crystal selective emitters and filters into a single device. Finite difference time domain and current transport simulations show that IPSEs can significantly suppress sub-bandgap photons. This increases heat-to-electricity conversion for photonic crystal based emitters from 35.2 up to 41.8% at 1573 K for a GaSb photovoltaic (PV) diode with matched bandgaps of 0.7 eV. The physical basis of this enhancement is a shift from a perturbative to a nonperturbative regime, which maximized photon recycling. Furthermore, combining IPSEs with nonconductive optical waveguides eliminates a key difficulty associated with TPV: the need for precise alignment between the hot selective emitter and cool PV diode. The physical effects of both the IPSE and waveguide can be quantified in terms of an extension of the concept of an effective view factor.

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High-temperature stability and selective thermal emission of polycrystalline tantalum photonic crystals

Cited by 151 publications

References 26 publications

Tailoring high-temperature radiation and the resurrection of the incandescent source

Tailoring high-temperature radiation and the resurrection of the incandescent source

Solar thermophotovoltaics: reshaping the solar spectrum

Integrated photonic crystal selective emitter for thermophotovoltaics

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