Combining photovoltaics and thermoradiative technologies for energy harvesting in space

Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. and Stanford University will collaborate to evaluate the theoretical and practical limits of a device that combines photovoltaics (PV) and thermoradiative (TR) technologies to harvest energy in space applications. The PV component will harvest energy from the solar spectrum, while the TR component will harvest energy from the wasted heat generated in the PV cell via thermal radiation to the cold universe. The team will use its semiconductor device modeling capabilities to study the factors limiting the efficiency of HgCdTe and HgTe-CdTe-superlattice TR devices. In particular, the effect of device parameters on non-radiative generation/recombination processes, which determine the performance of TR devices, will be explored. HgCdTe photoconductors from Sivanathan Laboratories, Inc. will be used by Stanford University in their TR device measurement and evaluation of TR efficiency. Using our expertise in PV devices and HgCdTe IR photodetectors, we will evaluate possible obstacles for the integration of a PV cell with a TR device from a system level perspective.