GeniusCatalyst members,
Here is a wonderful new energy source invention that should improve people's lives with healthy sustainable abundance.
I was granted U.S. Patent 3890161 DIODE ARRAY in 1975. The patent application was filed in 1973 and the patent reverted to the public in 1992. The diode array is a chip that typically consists of billions of nanometer scale diodes in consistent alignment parallel ( where all the anodes are connected to one buss sheet and the anodes abut a shared cathode substrate) or, for higher voltage, parallel series to rectify and aggregate nanowatt level internal radio frequency thermal noise (also known as Johnson noise) within electronic components (not involving antennas) into D.C. electricity. Many diodes will produce useful D.C. power for a matched impedance electrical load and overwhelm the load's own thermal noise (a baseless academic concern).
The diode array converts ambient heat into electrical energy without starting with a gross temperature difference where heat at a gross warmer temperature needs to flow to a gross cooler temperature. Instead, heat in the form of random electron movement, is passively sorted into forward movements, which are preferentially passed, and reverse motions, which are preferentially blocked. Thus a variant of Maxwell's demon, Smoluchowski's trapdoor, applied to electrons, is taken at face value to work. Very small diodes are used as Smoluchowski's trapdoors for electrons. In the diode array many very small diodes are fabricated in consistent alignment parallel so the net preferential conveyance of electrons is aggregated for a large number of diodes rendering the small net rectified thermal movement of electrons in each diode into a large amount of low voltage, high current D.C. electrical power. The electrical power is produced with an intimately associated equal degree of cooling.
Less power is needed to sort the random power than is supplied by the random thermal power. The power needed to alter the width of the depletion region at the junction, which determines the conductivity of a diode, is deducted from the thermal noise leaving net rectified power as intermittent electrical power of one polarity.
The electrons do not have to supply “information energy” to move within a diode. A macroscopically uniform temperature is microscopically non uniform so nanometer scale devices as long as they are above absolute zero in temperature have an endless supply of moving electrons with nanometer scale avoidance of entropic stillness. The manufactured order of the diode and the array will passively impose order on the electrons rectifying and aggregating them resulting in a summation of any net rectified electrical output to any desired level. Inefficiently rectified intermittent currents can be aggregated to any higher power level proportional to the number of diodes.
The electrons move uphill into the buss voltage within the source diode so they lose momentum so they become colder. The loss of thermal energy is equal to the gain of electrical energy released from the buss when electricity is drawn off. Diode arrays can easily withstand open circuit or short circuit conditions. In these cases no electrical output or refrigeration is produced.
I began this revolutionary physics quest 40 years ago after free time reading of Isaac Asimov on the Second Law of Thermodynamics (2LoT), one of the most strongly believed Science Laws. Dr. Asimov's wonderful writing led me to believe that 2LoT could be circumvented with nanotechnology.
I2LoT is a very expensive limitation on what is considered possible. The new hypothesis that 2LoT can be escaped on a nanometer scale is a science question. It should be tested openly and diligently by the scientific community. Unfortunately, science has gotten very comfortable with 2LoT for the last ~180 years. Belief in 2Lot is often used, arguably falsely, as an indicator of scientific competency. At the same time it is a very inelegant law, a sign of fallacy.
The concept that 2LoT could be circumvented with nanotechnology was tested in 1993 where more power than ~2 nanowatts, the power a single diode can deliver to a matched impedance load, 1 /2 kTB watts where 1 / 2 accounts for rectification, k=Boltzmann's constant, 1.38 x 10^-23; T=temperature in Kelvins, ~300 and B=Bandwidth, ~1 THz, the upper frequency limit of thermal noise, was measured from a chip consisting of ~5,600 2.3 um dia Au dot anodes surrounded by SiO2 on a n type GaAs substrate. The chip produced ~50 nanowatts as ~50 millivolts across 50 K ohms, substrate positive, under professional test conditions including a uniform temperature bath of stirred pure inert oil, showing feasibility. Tests for nanowatt power level refrigeration were not conducted. Unfortunately the documentation of this test is limited to a single page of test results.
The MEMS-Nanotechnology exchange Reston VirginiA has been asked to prepare a corroberation prototype of the 1993 results using a 1T7 whisker diode array with ~ 10,000 1 um Au anode diodes and then a power demonstraton prototype using an electron beam patterned set of 1,000 2mm x 2mm replicated dies from a 4" Dia GaAs wafer or a 2' InSb wafer with 250 replicated dies. Each die of either type should bear ~4 x 10^9 diodes.
Another practical diode array form would be to nanofabricate short vertical general ~2 nm dia. carbon nanotube anodes spaced ~ 30nm in staggered rows on an n type InSb (a high performance semiconductor) substrate producing arrays of 10^11 diodes / cm^2 at 50% efficiency this means a power density of ~100 watts / cm2.
The anode spot Pattern can be printed quickly with an electron beam stamp pad where billions of field emission needles set in a master pattern on a slab produce an image pattern with one pulse of negative voltage.
The diode array would greatly advance civilization. Future appliances would have clean, cheap, widely available, safe, quiet, reliable, CO and CO2 free power with or without a power grid. Air conditioning would more logically release electricity. Air conditioning would produce abundant electricity in warm climates. Food and medicine could be kept cold reliably in stand alone chests. Crops could have better and cheaper soil, watering, harvesting, and storage. Many kinds of electric vehicles would become practical. These vehicles would be clean enough to run in confined spaces. These vehicles would obtain their energy as they moved so energy storage would not be needed. Diode array powered shipping would be fast, cheap, and pervasive. Bird like automated aircraft with million kilometer maintenance intervals unless shot or snared could be built. Diode arrays in computers with minor inputs and outputs would recycle the heat from the operating chips so the system would not release heat or need external power while using lots of high power high speed logic.
The diode array will not automatically prevent its applications from becoming weapons. That is too much to ask of any technology. Diode arrays may remove the frustration that leads to terrorism. Civilization would become more diversified because diode arrays would support campers, people in fortresses, underground extensions of homes, nomadic bands, teenage floaters, hermits, recluses, deep survivalists, shantytown denizens, space travelers, underwater colonies as well as placid box dwellers.
I want this to be commercialized without fussy licensing restrictions on the diode array or its applications so all humanity can be involved in its synergistic development. NonDisclosure Agreements and noncompete requirements are not in this spirit. I would like very soft patents that did little beyond acknowledge the creative originality of inventors. Society should not be enmeshed in a burdensome license tangle. Diode array applications become unpatentable if they are widely published instead of being patented promptly and they are developed by skilled craftsmen rather than overwhelming creativity.
First, a prototype development group with great team strength needs to emerge. Later, many application development groups should emerge. Micro angel capitalization is the cleanest form of financing. A smooth, free, open, and fair market should support useful applications using commodity chips made by commodity equipment. The technical details would diffuse to the educational system where the next generation of application developers would learn about the craft efficiently. The first developers would recover their specific research and development costs with a modest positioning premium on their price. Positioning is an effect that arises in consumers because of a need to reduce the number of alternatives when getting through life assisted by their purchases.
Profiteers may try to sell diode array based products at exorbitant prices. The response is to aggressively bring in more reasonable suppliers. The Federation will readily do this. It may become illegal, as a sign of social compassion, to deprive a debtor of basic appliances that are very important to basic survival yet have little commercial value. Poor people may be assisted in obtaining diode array powered appliances with peer secured micro loans. These appliances would be highly likely to support great productivity gains in many uses.
Aloha,
Charles M. Brown
abundance@logonbasic.comhttp://energyprosperity.googlepages.com/home808-828-0297
4264 Ala Muku Pl. C-3
Kilauea Kauai Hawaii
96754
