High temperature epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole metamaterial emitters for thermophotovoltaics

TL;DR

This paper introduces epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole metamaterials for high-temperature thermophotovoltaic emitters, enabling precise control of thermal emission and surpassing efficiency limits.

Contribution

It presents a novel class of epsilon-near-pole metamaterials and a high temperature plasmonics approach for thermal emission engineering.

Findings

Metamaterial emitters near 1500 K can improve thermophotovoltaic efficiency.

Angular, spectral, and width tuning of thermal emission achieved.

Surpasses the Shockley-Queisser limit of 41% efficiency.

Abstract

We propose a method for engineering thermally excited far field electromagnetic radiation using epsilon-near-zero metamaterials and introduce a new class of artificial media: epsilon-near-pole metamaterials. We also introduce the concept of high temperature plasmonics as conventional metamaterial building blocks have relatively poor thermal stability. Using our approach, the angular nature, spectral position, and width of the thermal emission and optical absorption can be finely tuned for a variety of applications. In particular, we show that these metamaterial emitters near 1500 K can be used as part of thermophotovoltaic devices to surpass the full concentration Shockley-Queisser limit of 41%. Our work paves the way for high temperature thermal engineering applications of metamaterials.