Modeling Heat Transfer for a Near-Field Thermophotovoltaic Cell, Shengyuan Lu, UG '21, (2312350)

Thermophotovoltaic(TPV) devices consist of a high-temperature radiator and low temperature PV cell and converts thermal heat transferred into electrical energies. Recent studies in near-field thermophotovoltaic(NFTPV) devices have shown significant enhancement of heat transfer compare的to traditional far-field thermophotovoltaic cells. While existing works have computed total heat absorbed from all mechanisms apart from Interband Absorption, which include free carrier and lattice absorption, our model enables computation of heat transfer solely due to Interband Absorption. On the other hand, to facilitate the design of cell for electrical conversion, we build an algorithm that computes the heat absorption profile across the cell which runs linearly with respect to number of layers in the system.