Thermophotonic cells in self-sustaining parallel circuits

Abstract

Thermophotonic (TPX) cells, which integrate a light-emitting diode (LED) and a photovoltaic (PV) cell, offer potential advantages over thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells for low-grade waste heat utilization. While TPX cells traditionally operate in an independent circuit, which requires an external battery storage unit, the self-sustaining circuit presents an appealing alternative that eliminates the need for the storage unit. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of TPX cells operating in the self-sustaining circuit. We provide clear expressions for the electrical currents flowing through the LED and PV cell, considering the different bandgaps of the LED and the PV cell. Our results reveal that the bandgap energy of the LED must exceed that of the PV cell for the TPX cell to function in a self-sustaining parallel circuit. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the performance of the TPX cell in the self-sustaining circuit improves with a narrower bandgap energy for the PV cell and a wider bandgap energy for the LED, regardless of the far-field or near-field configurations. While near-field TPX cells exhibit higher power density, they also experience decreased energy efficiency compared to far-field TPX cells. Additionally, we explore the scenario where the bandgaps of the LED and PV cell are the same, analyzing the performance of a closed-structured self-sustaining parallel circuit with multiple LEDs and PV cells in the near-field configuration. We find that the near-field effect has a marginal impact on TPX cells with identical bandgaps, which means that the near-field TPX cell in the self-sustaining circuit will not be useful in practice. The insights gained from this work serve as valuable design guidelines for TPX cells operating in the self-sustaining parallel circuit, enabling practical operation without the need for an external battery storage unit.