I-Corps: Thermophotovoltaic system without a vacuum or air gap

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是基于能量转换科学和材料工程的基本发现开发新的零间隙热光伏技术。这一创新在技术和经济上都为废热收集和管理领域的革命提供了一条可行的途径。这项新技术将提高对广泛的相关物理效应和潜在增强机制的科学理解，从而进一步提高其他废热和可再生能源技术的能量转换性能。从社会和商业的角度来看，该项目将影响全球万亿美元的能源和建筑市场，导致能源效率和实质性的提高，并有助于解决2050年零排放的重大挑战。I-Corps项目的基础是开发一种高性能热光伏能源转换技术（零间隙热光伏），为住宅热能市场和热电联产提供热光伏可再生发电，以提高现有住宅热能系统的能源效率和可持续性。提出的零间隙热光伏技术背后的基本机制已经通过概念验证设备制造和测试得到验证。独特的器件结构解决了传统热光伏技术存在的问题，允许更高的功率输出和效率，并使其具有成本效益，大规模制造和免维护的系统级集成成为可能。这些产品，包括能源联合发电机和热泵性能增强附加设备，可以很容易地集成到现有的住宅热能系统中。它们为解决当前热能系统制造商和集成商面临的挑战提供了显著的竞争优势：能源效率、成本和温室气体减排之间的权衡。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of novel zero gap thermophotovoltaic technology based on fundamental discovery in energy conversion science and material engineering. The innovation provides a feasible pathway, both technologically and economically, to revolutionize the field of waste heat harvesting and management. This new technology will improve the scientific understanding of a broad range of relevant physical effects and potential enhancement mechanisms to further improve energy conversion performance in other waste heat and renewable energy technologies. From the societal and commercial perspective, this project will impact the global trillion-dollar energy and building markets, leading to the improvement in both energy efficiency and substantiality and helping to address the grand challenge of the zero emissions by 2050.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a high performance thermophotovoltaic energy conversion technology (zero gap thermophotovoltaics) that provides thermophotovoltaic renewable power generation to the residential thermal energy market and co-generation to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of existing residential thermal energy systems. The fundamental mechanism behind the proposed zero gap thermophotovoltaic technology has been validated with proof-of-concept device fabrication and tests. The unique device structure addresses the existing issues of traditional thermophotovoltaic technology, allowing much higher power output and efficiency, and making it possible for cost-effective, large-scale manufacturing and maintenance-free system level integration. These products, including energy co-generators and heat pump performance augmentation add-on devices, can be integrated easily within existing residential thermal energy systems. They provide a significant competitive advantage to solve the existing challenges faced by the current thermal energy systems manufacturers and integrators: the tradeoffs among energy efficiency, cost, and greenhouse emission reduction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.