Design and Fabrication of a Wavelength-Selective Near-Infrared Metasurface Emitter for a Thermophotovoltaic System

In this study, a tungsten-SiO2-based metal–insulator–metal-structured metasurface for the thermal emitter of the thermophotovoltaic system was designed and fabricated. The proposed emitter was fabricated by applying the photolithography method. The fabricated emitter has high emissivity in the visible to near-infrared region and shows excellent wavelength selectivity. This spectral emissivity tendency agreed well with the result calculated by the finite-difference time-domain method. Additionally, the underlying mechanism of its emission was scrutinized. Study of the fabrication process and theoretical mechanisms of the emission, clarified in this research, will be fundamental to design the wavelength-selective thermal emitter.

Design and Numerical Evaluation of a Highly Selective CMOS-Compatible Mid-IR Thermal Emitter/Detector Structure Using Optical Tamm-States

In this work we propose and evaluate a concept for a selective thermal emitter suitable for monolithic on-chip integration suitable for fabrication by conventional CMOS-compatible processes. The concept is based on our recently presented work on vertical-cavity enhanced resonant thermal emission (VERTE). Here we present the application of this concept to a slab waveguide structure, instead of depositing extended dielectric layers forming a one-dimensional photonic crystal. We optimize the dimension by certain design considerations and geneticalgorithm optimization and demonstrate effective absorbing/emitting properties (depending on different slab heights) of such a low-cost structure by exciting so-called optical Tamm-states on the metal-dielectric interface.

Optimal Design of Wavelength Selective Thermal Emitter for Thermophotovoltaic Applications

We theoretically and numerically demonstrate optimal design of wavelength selective thermal emitter using one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) metal-dielectric gratings for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) applications. Proposed design consists of tungsten (W) and silicon dioxide (SiO2) gratings which can withstand high temperatures. Radiative properties of 1D grating were calculated using a numerical method, while effective medium approximation was used for 2D gratings. Optimal designs were obtained such that output power is maximum for GaSb photovoltaic (PV) cell at emitter temperature of 1500 K and radiated energy for longer wavelengths is limited to a low value. A constrained optimization was performed using genetic algorithm (GA) to arrive at optimal design.