Efficiency enhancement of an updated solar-driven intermediate band thermoradiative device

Hybrid Photovoltaic/Thermoelectric Systems for Round-the-Clock Energy Harvesting

“…In order to enhance the power output and efficiency of TRCs, intermediate-band thermoradiative cells (IB-TRCs) have been introduced, which contain an intermediate-band material between two semiconductors. Besides the transition from the conduction band to the valance band, IB-TRCs also allow for inter-band transitions from the conduction band to the intermediate band and from the intermediate band to the valance band, which ultimately leads to a larger electric current due to the low-energy electrons contributing to the current generation [ 135 , 136 ]. However, a prerequisite for IB-TRCs is that the intermediate electronic band must have a dispersion in energy that is big enough to consider the group of states as a band, and not as a set of impurity levels, because the impurity levels will induce a strong Shockley–Read–Hall (SRH) recombination.…”

Detailed analysis of the impact of internal heat leaks on the working properties of cold-carrier energy-emissive harvesters

“…Zhang et al then studied the performance of TRCs that work coupled to graphene based thermoionic devices that work under solar illumination [22]. Li et al studied the exergoeconomic performance of space TRCs [23] and Fernandez presented a general work on the theoretical spaces that must be considered to study different types of emissive energy converters [24], including TRCs [25][26][27][28][29]. Fernández also presented a thermodynamic model, based on Finite-time Thermodynamics , that is similar to previous models used to study Thermophotovoltaic systems [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59].…”