Thermophotovoltaics with spectral and angular selective doped-oxide thermal emitters

Deliberate control of thermal emission properties using nanophotonics has improved a number of applications including thermophotovoltaics (TPV), radiative cooling and infrared spectroscopy. In this work, we study the effect of simultaneous control of angular and spectral properties of thermal emitters on the efficiencies of TPV systems. While spectral selectivity reduces sub-bandgap losses, angular selectivity is expected to enhance view factors at larger separation distances and hence to provide flexibilities in cooling the photovoltaic converter. We propose a design of an angular and spectral selective thermal emitter based on waveguide perfect absorption phenomena in epsilon-near-zero thin-films. Aluminum-doped Zinc-Oxide is used as an epsilon-near-zero material with a cross-over frequency in the near-infrared. A high contrast grating is designed to restrict the emission in a range of angles around the normal direction, while an integrated filter ensures spectral selectivity to reduce sub-bandgap losses. Theoretical analysis shows an expected relative enhancement of the TPV system efficiency of at least 32% using selective emitters with ideal angular and spectral selectivity at large separation distances compared to a blackbody. This enhancement factor, however, reduces to 3.9% with non-ideal selective emitters. This big reduction of the efficiency is attributed to sub-bandgap losses, off-angular losses and hightemperature dependence of optical constants. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America