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Feature Issue of Optics Express

Advances in Thermophotovoltaics

Submission Opens:15 February 2020

Submission Deadline: 15 June 2020

Optics Express welcomes submissions to a feature issue on "Advances in Thermophotovoltaics" in conjunction with the Spring Meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) in Strasbourg, France on 25-29 May 2020, which will be published in the Energy and Environmental Optics Express dedicated section of the journal. The journal welcomes submissions only from the oral and poster papers accepted for the meeting.

Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) refers to thermal to electrical power conversion based on the photovoltaic effect. It is suited for thermal sources operating at temperatures near or above 1000 K, such as waste or stored heat recovery, or solar energy conversion involving an intermediate thermal energy storage. Given the huge potentials of these systems, and recent progress in high-temperature materials science, photonics, and growth and processing of III-V semiconductors, a renaissance of research on thermophotovoltaics has taken place over the last decade. The challenges to tackle are indeed multiple, for designing, fabricating, and testing new materials, devices, and systems for TPV applications. The Feature Issue will cover recent advances in areas relevant to TPV and show that progress follows the anticipated slope towards high efficiencies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Selective emitters to tailor the spectrum of radiation useful to photovoltaic conversion and their thermal stability
  • Optimum semiconductor materials and architectures of the photovoltaic cells and their fabrication and characterization
  • Laboratory experiments assessing the performances of devices and systems
  • Assessment of optical, electrical, and thermal losses and their mitigation
  • New concepts for improving efficiency including hybridization with other thermal-to-electrical power converters
  • TPV systems and applications: solar-TPV, TPV for space, combustion TPV, near-field TPV systems
  • Thermophotonic power generation and cooling

All submissions need to present original, previously unpublished work and will be subject to the normal standards and peer review processes of the journal. The standard Optics Express Article Processing Charges will apply to all published articles. To be eligible for publication, the accepted conference contribution (number, title, and authors) must be included in the cover letter at submission. Please prepare manuscripts according to the author instructions for submission to Optics Express and submit through OSA's electronic submission system, specifying from the drop-down menu that the manuscript is for the feature issue on Advances in Thermophotovoltaics.

Feature Editors

Rodolphe Vaillon, CNRS-Université de Montpellier, France (Lead Editor)
Alejandro Datas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Mathieu Francoeur, University of Utah, USA
Makoto Shimizu, Tohoku University, Japan