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Quantum-coupled single-electron thermal to electric conversion scheme

J. Appl. Phys. 106, 094315 (2009); doi:10.1063/1.3257402

Published 13 November 2009

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D. M. Wu,1 P. L. Hagelstein,1 P. Chen,2 K. P. Sinha,3 and A. Meulenberg4
1Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA
2Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
3Department of physics, IISc, Bangalore 560012, India
4HiPi Consulting, Frederick, Maryland 21774, USA
Thermal to electric energy conversion with thermophotovoltaics relies on radiation emitted by a hot body, which limits the power per unit area to that of a blackbody. Microgap thermophotovoltaics take advantage of evanescent waves to obtain higher throughput, with the power per unit area limited by the internal blackbody, which is n2 higher. We propose that even higher power per unit area can be achieved by taking advantage of thermal fluctuations in the near-surface electric fields. For this, we require a converter that couples to dipoles on the hot side, transferring excitation to promote carriers on the cold side which can be used to drive an electrical load. We analyze the simplest implementation of the scheme, in which excitation transfer occurs between matched quantum dots. Next, we examine thermal to electric conversion with a lossy dielectric (aluminum oxide) hot-side surface layer. We show that the throughput power per unit active area can exceed the n2 blackbody limit with this kind of converter. With the use of small quantum dots, the scheme becomes very efficient theoretically, but will require advances in technology to fabricate. ©2009 American Institute of Physics
History: Received 4 August 2009; accepted 3 October 2009; published 13 November 2009
Permalink: http://link.aip.org/link/?JAPIAU/106/094315/1

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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords
PACS
  • 84.60.Jt
    Photoelectric conversion: solar cells and arrays
  • 44.40.+a
    Thermal radiation
  • YEAR: 2009

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PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN:
0021-8979 (print)   1089-7550 (online)
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