Thermophotovoltaic Spectral Converter

Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) turn heat directly into electricity by radiating thermal photons from a hot emitter onto a low-bandgap photovoltaic cell — no moving parts, no combustion turbine. This simulator draws real photon wavelengths from the Planck blackbody distribution at a chosen emitter temperature, fires them across the gap toward a cell with a tunable bandgap, and shows exactly why spectral matching is the whole game: photons below the bandgap can't be absorbed usefully, photons far above it dump their excess energy as heat, and only photons near the gap convert efficiently. Toggle the spectral filter to see how recycling unusable sub-bandgap photons back to the emitter — the technique real high-efficiency TPV systems rely on — reshapes the live conversion-efficiency readout.