4 ms·
> According to Yablonovitch, this finding builds on work that he and students published in 2011, which found that the key to boosting solar cell efficiency was
by spuz 7y ago
> According to Yablonovitch, this finding builds on work that he and students published in 2011, which found that the key to boosting solar cell efficiency was not by absorbing more photons (light) but emitting them. By adding a highly reflective mirror on the back of a photovoltaic cell, they broke efficiency records
> "What the mirror does is create a dense infrared luminescent photon gas within the solar cell, a phenomenon that adds voltage," said Yablonovitch
> Recently, his team recognized that this mirror could serve double duty. In fact, it solves one of the biggest challenges in thermophotovoltaics: how to exploit the thermal (heat) photons that have too little energy to produce electricity. It turns out that the mirror can reflect those small photons to reheat the thermal source, providing a second chance for a high energy photon to be created and generate electricity. This phenomenon leads to unprecedented efficiency.
Given these paragraphs and the name "thermophotovoltalics", that this is about solar power seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw. Also, googling around I am seeing figures for steam turbine efficiency of between 40 and 80%. How sure are you this is not about solar cells?
- arijun 7y agoYour quotes seem to very clearly support the idea its a an onboard heat source as claimed by gp. Specifically >>the mirror can reflect those small photons to reheat the thermal source I'm pretty sure holding a mirror up to the sun is not going to change the sun's temperature much. > I am seeing figures for steam turbine efficiency of between 40 and 80% There's more that goes into choosing an engine for a drone than just efficiency. Particularly important would be power/weight. A Carnot engine would get much higher efficiency for sure, but would not put out nearly enough power per weight for a drone to fly. (It's so low power we don't even use it for cars!)
- IanCal 7y ago> Given these paragraphs and the name "thermophotovoltalics", that this is about solar power seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw. Also, googling around I am seeing figures for steam turbine efficiency of between 40 and 80%. How sure are you this is not about solar cells? That it's not about the solar cells people in the comments mean? Very, the paper and citations talk about furnaces, and the temperature this operates at is 1200C. This isn't something you'd stick on your roof.