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A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces inradiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for mattercharacterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-fieldenergy is to scatter it to the far field. Another way is to bring absorbersclose to thermal emitters, and the advent of a full class of novel photonicdevices exploiting thermal photons in the near field has been predicted in thelast two decades. However, efficient heat-to-electricity conversion ofnear-field thermal photons, i.e. the seminal building block, could not beachieved experimentally until now. Here, by approaching a micron-sized infraredphotovoltaic cell at nanometric distances from a hot surface, we demonstrateconversion efficiency up to 14% leading to unprecedented electrical powerdensity output (7500 W.m-2), orders of magnitude larger than all previousattempts. This proof of principle is achieved by using hot graphite microsphereemitters (~800 K) and indium antimonide cells, whose low bandgap energy matchesthe emitter infrared spectrum and which are specially designed for the nearfield. These results pave the way for efficient photoelectric detectorsconverting thermal photons directly in the near field. They also highlight thatnear-field thermophotovoltaic converters, which harvest radiative thermalenergy in a contactless manner, are now competing with other energy-harvestingdevices, such as thermoelectrics, over a large range of heat sourcetemperatures.

Harnessing near-field thermal photons with efficient photovoltaic conversion