Towards a High-Efficiency Micro-Thermophotovoltaic Generator

Hydrocarbon fuels have such a high energy density that even a relatively inefficient con-verter of chemical energy into electrical can significantly exceed the energy density of state-of-the-art batteries. This work attempts to do exactly this on a millimeter scale by means of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power conversion approach. We demonstrated the first-of-a-kind propane-oxygen fueled catalytic silicon based MEMS microreactor integrated with low-bandgap GaInAsSb (0.53 eV bandgap) photovoltaic cells to create a fully operational millimeter scale TPV system. The initial fuel to electricity system efficiency was measured at 0.8%. A cell area of 2 cm2 produced 200 mW of electricity from a chemical input of 28 W. These results match well with developed system models. Additionally, we predict the ef-ficiency can be doubled by improving the view factor, vacuum packaging, and eliminatin