Exploring the Performance of a Micro-Gap Thermionic Energy Converter

Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) is a unique method of transforming energy, providing a direct exchange of excess heat to usable power with no moving parts or harmful byproducts. TEC has impressive potential for waste heat recovery, clean energy generation, and even enhancement of existing clean energy technologies such as solar or nuclear energy. While TEC has received substantial interest from the scientific community, specifically micro/nanoscale TECs, studies on TEC are limited to computational investigations, with very few experimental studies. These limitations are due to the harsh conditions required for testing TEC: thermal gradients as large as 1000 K between the electrodes while maintaining gap distances as small as 500nm. In this study, we develop an experimental platform to test micro/nanoscale TEC and analyze the effects of various materials, temperature differences, and gap distances. This experiment enables extensive studies of TEC—realizing many of the theoretical predictions proposed in previous literature—and allows for a more precise understanding of charge transport at the micro/nanoscale, a vital step for understanding how TEC can be advanced further.