High efficiency quasi-monochromatic infrared emitter

Incandescent radiation sources are widely used as mid-infrared emitters owing to the lack of alternative for compact and low cost sources. A drawback of miniature hot systems such as membranes is their low efficiency, e. g., for battery powered systems. For targeted narrow-band applications such as gas spectroscopy, the efficiency is even lower. In this paper, we introduce design rules valid for very generic membranes demonstrating that their energy efficiency for use as incandescent infrared sources can be increased by two orders of magnitude. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.