A Dual-Junction Thermophotovoltaic System Based on Tamm Plasmon Thermal Emitter

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology plays a significant role in energy harvesting because it can efficiently convert radiative thermal energy into electricity. However, only the portion of emitted energy higher than the bandgap of PV cells are effective, and photons with energy that greatly exceeds the bandgap inevitably lead to thermalization loss, hence the efficiencies of previously reported TPV systems still remain lower than the theoretical limit. This work proposes a dual-junction TPV system based on a Tamm plasmon multilayer emitter, which utilizes the advantages of selective emission and multijunction conversion. In the system, each sub-cell can absorb and utilize more photons, and also reduce the non-absorption loss of sub-bandgap photons. In consideration of thermalization loss, the proposed TPV system yields a maximum efficiency of 19.36%, which greatly exceeds the single-junction TPV systems having 8% (GaSb) and 8.37% (GaInAsSb). This work is beneficial for the design of high-efficiency TPV systems based on Tamm emitters and multijunction cells.