Analysis of a single-layer thermophotovoltaic system at moderate temperatures

A study of a parallel-plate system for thermophotovoltaic power production at moderate temperatures is reported. The impetus behind this analysis is t he desire to apply systems of this type in microdevices where large tempera ture differences would be difficult to sustain. The emphasis is on the comb ination of the photovoltaic (PV) modeling (which has been relatively well d ocumented in the literature) with the thermal transport aspects, particular ly the radiative properties, which have been addressed less fully. Of the l atter, the monochromatic emissivity is defined in detail. In0.8Ga0.2As is c onsidered as the basic PV material, and two emitter surface treatments are assumed in the analysis including the gray approximation and both an ideali stic and a realistic selective surface. Estimates of both the power generat ion and the power generation efficiency are determined. As expected for tem perature differences of these magnitudes, the energy production is shown to be quite small.