Journal
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Volume 10, Issue 6, Pages 1367-1371Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c7ee00366h
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation (NSF) under NSF [ECS-0335765]
- Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC), an Energy Frontier Research Center - U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) [DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577]
- Army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies [W911NF-13-D-0001]
- Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology Collaborative Technology Alliance [892730]
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We present a technology that efficiently harnesses the energy content of hydrocarbon fuels in a volume that is only a fraction of a cubic inch. A propane-fueled microcombustor heats a photonic crystal emitter to incandescence and the resulting spectrally-confined thermal radiation drives low-bandgap PV cells to generate electricity. We overcome the technical challenges that are currently limiting thermophotovoltaics in the following ways: we develop new fabrication processes; we adopt high-temperature alloys to improve the thermo-mechanical stability; we adopt commercial polycrystalline tantalum to fabricate large-area photonic crystals; and finally, we develop a passivation coating for improved thermo-chemical stability. We demonstrate unprecedented heat-to-electricity efficiencies exceeding 4%, greater than the 2-3% efficiencies that were previously thought to be the practical limit, and we predict that over 12% efficiency is achievable with only engineering optimization. For reference, a 1.5% efficiency corresponds to the energy density of lithium ion batteries. This work opens new opportunities to free portable electronics, robots, and small drones from the constraints of bulky power sources.
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