Rice Device Channels Heat Into Light

July 17, 2019 | Rice University

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Nanotube films suit the task because they stand up to temperatures as high as 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,092 degrees Fahrenheit). Naik’s team built proof-of-concept devices that allowed them to operate at up to 700 C (1,292 F) and confirm their narrow-band output. To make them, the team patterned arrays of submicron-scale cavities into the chip-sized films.

“There’s an array of such resonators, and each one of them emits thermal photons in just this narrow spectral window,” Naik said. “We aim to collect them using a photovoltaic cell and convert it to energy, and show that we can do it with high efficiency.”

Rice postdoctoral researcher Weilu Gao is co-lead author and graduate student Xinwei Li is co-author. Kono is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy and of materials science and nanoengineering. Naik is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The Basic Energy Science program of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Robert A. Welch Foundation supported the research.

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