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Nighttime Photovoltaic Cells: Electrical Power Generation by Optically Coupling with Deep Space

  • Tristan Deppe
    Tristan Deppe
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering  and  Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, United States
    More by Tristan Deppe
  •  and 
  • Jeremy N. Munday*
    Jeremy N. Munday
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering  and  Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, United States
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, California 95616, United States
    *E-mail: [email protected]
    More by Jeremy N. Munday
    Orcidhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-0881-9876
Cite this: ACS Photonics 2020, 7, 1, 1–9
Publication Date (Web):November 20, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00679
Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society
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    Abstract

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    Photovoltaics possess significant potential due to the abundance of solar power incident on earth; however, they can only generate electricity during daylight hours. In order to produce electrical power after the sun has set, we consider an alternative photovoltaic concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the night sky as a heat sink, resulting in a “nighttime photovoltaic cell” that employs thermoradiative photovoltaics and concepts from the advancing field of radiative cooling. In this Perspective, we discuss the principles of thermoradiative photovoltaics, the theoretical limits of applying this concept to coupling with deep space, the potential of advanced radiative cooling techniques to enhance their performance, and a discussion of the practical limits, scalability, and integrability of this nighttime photovoltaic concept.

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