I-Corps: Thermophotovoltaic system without a vacuum or air gap

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of novel zero gap thermophotovoltaic technology based on fundamental discovery in energy conversion science and material engineering. The innovation provides a feasible pathway, both technologically and economically, to revolutionize the field of waste heat harvesting and management. This new technology will improve the scientific understanding of a broad range of relevant physical effects and potential enhancement mechanisms to further improve energy conversion performance in other waste heat and renewable energy technologies. From the societal and commercial perspective, this project will impact the global trillion-dollar energy and building markets, leading to the improvement in both energy efficiency and substantiality and helping to address the grand challenge of the zero emissions by 2050. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a high performance thermophotovoltaic energy conversion technology (zero gap thermophotovoltaics) that provides thermophotovoltaic renewable power generation to the residential thermal energy market and co-generation to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of existing residential thermal energy systems. The fundamental mechanism behind the proposed zero gap thermophotovoltaic technology has been validated with proof-of-concept device fabrication and tests. The unique device structure addresses the existing issues of traditional thermophotovoltaic technology, allowing much higher power output and efficiency, and making it possible for cost-effective, large-scale manufacturing and maintenance-free system level integration. These products, including energy co-generators and heat pump performance augmentation add-on devices, can be integrated easily within existing residential thermal energy systems. They provide a significant competitive advantage to solve the existing challenges faced by the current thermal energy systems manufacturers and integrators: the tradeoffs among energy efficiency, cost, and greenhouse emission reduction. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.