Tamm plasmon enabled narrowband thermal emitter for solar thermophotovoltaics

Solar Thermophotovoltaics (STPV) has garnered great attention due to the pronounced energy transfer efficiency through a proper spectral transformation with respect to the bandgap of PV cells. In this work, we demonstrate a spectrally selective thermal emitter enabled by optical Tamm state (OTS) in a one-dimensional photonic structure, which is HfO2 and SiO2 layers alternatively stacked on a Mo substrate. The as-prepared emitter achieves a maximal simulated thermal emissivity up to 0.97, bandwidth down to 48 nm at 1.9 μm. The overall system efficiency of the proposed emitter-based STPV device is evaluated, which is up to 33.7% under the solar concentration of 2500 and area ratio of 20, providing a potential route towards the utilization of OTS-based emitters in practical STPV systems.