Dear Folks:

What is your opinion on the viability of this radical technology proposed by Charles M. Brown. They talk that the costs of a Kilowatt chip may be a dollar and last a million hours ( 113 years ).
:


" I have invented, patented1, and tested2 a chip containing very many very small diodes that absorbs uniform ambient heat and releases D.C. Electrical power. This is a superior energy source that is very inexpensive and will power small appliances out of the box without a need for power wiring anywhere in the world.

This has great potential to improve the prosperity of mankind.

The chip will quickly become an open source commodity. Many applications should also be open. It is also a hard science tool for science fiction.

Michael Huff3 at the Stanford MEM network, a network of nanotechnology developers, has given me a quote that $50,000 would pay for developing this chip. He could receive grant funding directly to improve the accountability as I am an unaffiliated inventor that can not personally produce the chip .

1 U.S. Patent 3,890,161, DIODE ARRAY. As a 1975 patent, it may be available in image form only, not yet in electronically searchable text form. The original materials specified in the patent have been superseded by C60 carbon buckyballs as anodes on an N type InSb (semiconductor) substrate.

2 In 1993 I commissioned the preparation and testing of an adapted satellite transponder chip containing 5,600 Au on GaAs diodes fabricated in a patch as an expedient for assemblers to find one diode where diodes operating at high frequencies have to be very small. Conductive paste was applied over the face of the chip to connect all the diodes in consistent alignment parallel as required. Next the chip was immersed in a constant temperature pure vegetable oil bath inside a shielding box in the California desert. The chip produced ~25 kTB watts where an output more than 1/2 kTB watts validates the theory that electrical thermal noise (Johnson Nouse) can be rectified and aggregated.
If replication of this test is desired, the chips may still be available as draw down obsolete stock from Virginia Diodes Inc. www.virginiadiodes.com . I have lost contact with the lab that adapted and tested the chip. The C60 / N type InSb version of the chip should perform much better. ~100 watts / cm2 @ 20o C @ 50% diode efficiency @ 1011 buckyballs / cm2 is estimated.

3 mhuff@mems-exchange.org http://www.memsnet.org/links/foundries

Aloha,
Charles M. Brown
(808) 828-0297
4264 Ala Muku Pl. #C-3
Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii 96754
abundance@logonhi.net
www.diodearray.com
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:CBC:Main_Page "




Thanks for your attention

My gut level reaction is to keep your wallet securely sandwiched between the seat of your chair and your backside. The device as described violates thermodynamic law. "Maxwells demon" also comes to mind.

Yes, selecting only the high velocity electrons (or holes) to flow across the p/n junction...

Thermal electron flow is not new:

http://www.cooldictionary.com/words/Thermionic-converter.wikipedia

But diodes? At room temperature? Hmmm...

Kevin, any diode produces a small amount of electricity that way.

What about the pyroelectric effect? It was discovered over 2,000 years ago by Theophrastus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric). Nasa is successfully using this effect to power a low-yield fusion reactor.

Yes, but a pyroelectric device requires the collector be at a lower temp than the emitter. So you have a Carnot type limitation. Iirc, Nasa used a heat generating isotope (Pu239?) on the emitter, and radiating fins on the collector.

Have you gents ever heard of the Peltier effect? Essentially stacks of p/n junctions. Apply a current and one side gets cold, the other gets hot. Fairly routine device. Very inefficient. Alternately, by heating or cooling the appropriate side, electricity will flow. I would debate the kilowatts necessary to run appliances from a similar, single chip device at room temperature.

Yes, Peltier devices are solid state thermocouple loops aranged so that one half (material a>material b) is on one side of the chip and the other (b>a) is on the other side. And they only produce electricity while there is a temp difference between the sides. My objection is that the device described sounds like it's supposed to work with the entire device at a uniform temp.

Yes. That would be difficult.

That's what I thought too. :D Call me overly suspicious, but when a device described that sounds like it violates the three laws, I start thinking:

1. Hoax
2. Experimental Error (usually coupled with certain lack of knowlege on the part of the inventor)

All the while keeping a tight grip on my wallet. ;)

There is one simple reason why a diode or other semiconductor can produce electricity from ambient heat without requiring that there be a temperature difference. This is because any object that is heated generates black body radiation with a certain spectrum of microwave and infra-red radiation. The snap, crackle, and pop, and fizz of thermal noise is an energy that can be detected, or even captured and used. I don't believe the kilowatts of energy from a chip, but it really does generate electricity. It's not more mysterious than the rectification of radio waves or the photoelectric effect.

Dear Folks,
here's an extensive disscusion on the technicals, Donpatent's comments are great, and charlie brown makes many good arguments. enjoy

http://www.scienceagogo.com/cgi-bin...=1;t=000267;p=0

MetaKron

I am well aware of thermal noise as I happen to be an e-tech. But I don't see how you can get around thermodynamics and use it as a power source. My instincts say there has to be a gotcha, something along the lines of Maxwell's demon. We'll have to agree to disagree for now. I definately would like to know more about the device.

erich knight

The link isn't working and I can't seem to locate the article on the site.

MetaKron,

Thermal noise is random. There are as many thermal electrons on the P side of the junction as are on the N side at any given time. Without a temperature difference, there can be no net "flow" of thermal electrons across the junction to "rectify" (as in AC, where on alternate cycles, net electrons (charge) can be captured in a capacitor).

Radio waves have power. Radio emissions are not "electricity" they are radiation and stimulate the movement of electrons in a conductor which can be rectified (AC).

The photoelectric effect is driven by the energy of photons driving valence electrons in a conductor.

As kevinalm points out, the link is not working. If I'm wrong I'd love to know why.

Try it this time:

Science a GoGo Discussion Forum: diode array nanotech abundant clean energy

http://www.scienceagogo.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/1/267.html

Yea ..............it works........He's posted it around to many science and physics forums for support and to generate interest, as I said his open-sourse attitude is refreshing.

I did catch him with his pants down with my inquiries to Dr. Crowe at VDI (look at the time line of the postings)

Because he has posted it all over it should provide some good feedback, I'll keep ya'll up-dated

Charlie brown (from the link):

Thank you for presenting the Law of Entropy as grounds to reject the diode array. I think that a lot of people feel that way but don't want to talk about it. It is usually one of the first highly mathematical concepts taught in a physics class. Learning it is a rite of passage in school. Professional academic careers in the sciences are eased by accepting this law. It is attractive to some theologians. It applies to billions of dollars worth of machinery. Albert Einstein supported it because life and technology hasn't escaped it. For all this, the Law of Entropy is mostly an observed generalization with a mathematical expression which fits. Richard Feynman has one deeper supportive argument. He argues that a ratchet wheel and spring nudged pawl, a system that rotates in one direction in medium scale devices will fail to work for Brownian Movement at the nanometer scale. Skipping some detail, I think that multiple pawls without springs interacting with a ratchet wheel would work for Brownian Movement at the nanometer scale. Feynman without transitional completeness next argues that diodes will also fail. These are conditions for a new paradigm.

As I suspected. Entropy is wrong. Einstein and Feynman are wrong. Professional academics accept it because it makes their lives worth while, and there's an economic conspiracy because billions of dollars worth of machinery depend on us "accepting" it. Charlie Brown has it figured out.

A crank.

Here's a post by Tap-sa on the entropy question:

Science Forums and Debate - Astronomy and Cosmology http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15

But is this a Perpetuum Mobile or not, that is the question. It doesn't claim to be, at least not in a sense that it would create useful energy out of nothing. It claims to turn ambient heat into electricity. A knee-jerk reaction is to vocally object that this violates 2nd law of thermodynamics, entrophy would be reduced. But wait a minute, isn't entrophy a 'cosmic' concept; total energy in the universe remains constant, universe expands, ergo universe is getting colder.

If this gadget works it's unable to break the 2nd law in a cosmic scale, and even in smaller scales it would only break it 'for a moment'. It can probably never work at 100% efficiency and some of the energy it turns into electricity will be lost somewhere else. So the whole system will keep growing the entrophy even if this machine would locally reduce it to produce useful results. I'm not a physicist so above maybe to complete bs but here's what Wikipedia says about the issue:

The entropy of a thermally isolated macroscopic system never decreases (see Maxwell's demon), however a microscopic system may exhibit fluctuations of entropy opposite to that dictated by the second law (see Fluctuation Theorem). In fact the mathematical proof of the Fluctuation Theorem from time-reversible dynamics and the Axiom of Causality, constitutes a proof of the Second Law. In a logical sense the Second Law thus ceases to be a "Law" of Physics and instead becomes a theorem which is valid for large systems or long times.

Can these microscopic fluctuations be tapped to produce useful energy as this machine attempts to, dunno, but sure hope so

In one link the inventor speaks of prototype microchip with 5600 2.3micrometer diodes, I wonder if this is the 50 nanowatt test he speaks of. How about using 90nm tech and put a few hundred million diodes to single chip and see what it produces, if it scaled linearly we should see even milliwatts.