Buencuerpo Jerónimo, Llorens José M, Zilio Pierfrancesco, Raja Waseem, Cunha Joao, Alabastri Alessandro, Zaccaria Remo Proietti, Martí Antonio, Versloot Thijs
Opt Express. 2015 Sep 21;23(19):A1220-35. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.0A1220.
A series of photonic crystal structures are optimized for a photon enhanced thermionic emitter. With realistic parameter values to describe a p-type GaAs device we find an efficiency above 10%. The light-trapping structures increases the performance by 2% over an optimal bilayer anti-reflective coating. We find a device efficiency very close to the case of a Lambertian absorber, but below its maximum performance. To prevent an efficiency below 10% the vacuum gap must be dimensioned according to the concentration factor of the solar irradiance.
