Designing a Concentrated High-Efficiency Thermionic Solar Cell Enabled by Graphene Collector

We propose a concentrated thermionic emission solar cell design, which demonstrates a high solar-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency larger than 10\% under 600 sun, by harnessing the exceptional electrical, thermal and radiative properties of the graphene as a collector electrode. By constru...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Zhang, Xin, Chen, Xiaohang, Chen, Jinchan, Ang, Lay Kee, Yee Sin Ang
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 05.02.2021
Subjects
Converters
Design
Diamond films
Efficiency
Emitters
Energy conversion efficiency
Energy harvesting
Graphene
Mathematical models
Nanomaterials
Photovoltaic cells
Solar cells
Solar energy
Solar energy conversion
Space charge
Thermionic emission
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Summary:We propose a concentrated thermionic emission solar cell design, which demonstrates a high solar-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency larger than 10\% under 600 sun, by harnessing the exceptional electrical, thermal and radiative properties of the graphene as a collector electrode. By constructing an analytical model that explicitly takes into account the non-Richardson behavior of the thermionic emission current from graphene, space charge effect in vacuum gap, and the various irreversible energy losses within the subcomponents, we perform a detailed characterization on the conversion efficiency limit and electrical power output characteristics of the proposed system. We systematically model and compare the energy conversion efficiency of various configurations of graphene-graphene and graphene-diamond and diamond-diamond thermionic emitter, and show that utilizing diamond films as an emitter and graphene as a collector offers the highest maximum efficiency, thus revealing the important role of graphene in achieving high-performance thermionic emission solar cell. A maximum efficiency of 12.8\% under 800 sun has been revealed, which is significantly higher than several existing solid-state solar cell designs, such as the solar-driven thermoelectric and thermophotovoltaic converters. Our work thus opens up new avenues to advance the efficiency limit of thermionic solar energy conversion and the development of next-generation novel-nanomaterial-based solar energy harvesting technology.
ISSN:2331-8422