Is the self-charging battery a new type of pico-electret storage device ? Consider 3 devices as a progression over time: the electret, the EESTOR and the glass battery of Goodenough.
In the late 1930s the Electret was invented by Dr. Eguchi, a Japanese physicist. He sandwiched a decent dielectric which was Carnauba wax between two metal plates. When charged with high voltage and cycled with heat and cold, a polarized electrostatic charge becomes embedded in the wax. Some current will flow when the connection is closed but this is a very low current and very high voltage device. It was usable as a radio battery during WWll and electrets are still in production, mostly for use in microphones. Voltage can be very high – 10,000 v. and current in nanowatts but fully self-recharging. The active dimensions are microns. The EESTOR capacitor looks something like a lower voltage electret where an extreme dielectric keeps charge separated at about 10 nanometers and allows much higher current. Voltage is 400 or so and current has gone up by 6 or more orders of magnitude. In both cases, the electret or the EESTOR, a depleted cell will recharge to a fair fraction of its initial capacity. In so doing, the device will cool and the gain in charge is perfectly accounted for by the heat transfer. In both cases, the energy stored is a function of surface area of the dielectric. EESTOR uses nanoparticle of barium titanate. However, in a failure mode, the results can be catastrophic. In going from nano down to subnano surface area, it can be imagined that the glass battery exploits even lower voltage (2-3 v.) and much higher current due to extreme surface area – which is actually close to atomic level surface area – square kilometers per square cm. IOW a small cluster of atoms of an alkali such as sodium acts like a low voltage electret and can lend electrons to do work in what appears to be a very high current device compared to the above options. There is no redox reaction per se but there is a chemical force acting like redox at a few eV which will recharge and return the electron from ambient heat over time. In short, we can look at the glass battery as a new kind of picometer level electret. It appears to be overunity but is not since it is recharged from ambient heat. There is no thermodynamic law violation. Sure, this explanation is oversimplified, but it exposes the major weakness of the glass battery which is the time required for self-charge. What the inventors of the glass battery have done is to ameliorate this weakness by lowering the self-charge time by adding a quasi-redox avenue, which is called graphite intercalation. That technology is not new either and is used in lithium batteries today - but the novelty of the entire device lies in combining a number of well-known features into something which works. The main issue for the coming months is “can it be manufactured cheaply?” This is exciting. In fact, it is reminiscent of the excitement surrounding EESTOR many years ago which also worked but could not be manufactured at all in quantity. It was essentially an explosive device masquerading as a battery. The glass battery may be different in the risk category, but we are not there yet. They are trying to mass produce a device that operates at picometer levels. Even for those who have held out hope for LENR as the savior of society, this is most exciting… with the added bonus is that when you remove heat from ambient, you also lower global warming. A double bonus.
