Near-Field Thermophotonic Systems for Low-Grade Waste-Heat Recovery

Low-grade waste heat contains an enormous amount of exergy that can be recovered for renewable-energy generation. Current solid-state techniques for recovering low-grade waste heat, such as thermoelectric generators and thermophotovoltaics, however, are limited by low conversion efficiencies or power densities. In this work, we propose a solid-state near-field thermophotonic system. The system consists of a light-emitting diode (LED) on the hot side and a photovoltaic (PV) cell on the cold side. Part of the generated power by the PV cell is used to positively bias the LED. When operating in the near-field regime, the system can have power density and conversion efficiency significantly exceeding the performance of current solid-state approaches for low-grade waste-heat recovery. For example, when the gap spacing is 10 nm and the hot side and cold side are, respectively, 600 and 300 K, we show that the generated electric power density and thermal-to-electrical conversion efficiency can reach 9.6 W/cm² and 9.8%, respectively, significantly outperforming the current record-setting thermoelectric generators. We identify the alignment of the band gaps of the LED and the PV cell, the appropriate choice of thickness of the LED and PV cell to mitigate the effect of non-radiative recombination, and the use of highly reflective back mirrors as key factors that affect the performance of the system. Our work points to the significant potential of photonic systems for the recovery of low-grade waste heat.