Researchers develop device that channels heat into light

Rice University scientists are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation and increase the efficiency of solar energy systems.

By Mike Williams July 17, 2019

The carbon nanotube may be just the device to make solar panels – and anything else that loses energy through heat – far more efficient. Rice University scientists, led by Gururaj Naik and Junichiro Kono, are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation and increase the efficiency of solar energy systems.

Their invention is a hyperbolic thermal emitter that can absorb intense heat that would otherwise be spewed into the atmosphere, squeeze it into a narrow bandwidth and emit it as light that can be turned into electricity.

The discovery rests on another by Kono’s group in 2016 when it found a simple method to make highly aligned, wafer-scale films of closely packed nanotubes. Discussions with Naik, who joined Rice in 2016, led the pair to see if the films could be used to direct “thermal photons.”

Rice University graduate student Chloe Doiron co-led a project to create a device that recycles waste heat into electricity through aligned carbon nanotube films. Courtesy: Chloe Doiron/Rice University[/caption]

“The most efficient way to turn heat into electricity now is to use turbines, and steam or some other liquid to drive them,” he said. “They can give you nearly 50% conversion efficiency. Nothing else gets us close to that, but those systems are not easy to implement.” Naik and his colleagues aim to simplify the task with a compact system that has no moving parts.

The aligned nanotube films are conduits that absorb waste heat and turn it into narrow-bandwidth photons. Because electrons in nanotubes can only travel in one direction, the aligned films are metallic in that direction while insulating in the perpendicular direction, an effect Naik called hyperbolic dispersion. Thermal photons can strike the film from any direction, but can only leave via one.

“Instead of going from heat directly to electricity, we go from heat to light to electricity,” Naik said. “It seems like two stages would be more efficient than three, but here, that’s not the case.”

Naik said adding the emitters to standard solar cells could boost their efficiency from the current peak of about 22%. “By squeezing all the wasted thermal energy into a small spectral region, we can turn it into electricity very efficiently,” he said. “The theoretical prediction is that we can get 80% efficiency.”

Nanotube films suit the task because they stand up to temperatures as high as 1,700°C. Naik’s team built proof-of-concept devices that allowed them to operate at up to 700°C and confirm their narrow-band output. To make them, the team patterned arrays of submicron-scale cavities into the chip-sized films.

“There’s an array of such resonators, and each one of them emits thermal photons in just this narrow spectral window,” Naik said. “We aim to collect them using a photovoltaic cell and convert it to energy, and show that we can do it with high efficiency.”

Rice University

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– Edited by Chris Vavra, production editor, Control Engineering, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.


Author Bio: Mike Williams is a senior media relations specialist in Rice University's Office of Public Affairs.