I was granted U.S. Patent 3890161 in 1973, which is now
public property, for a chip that typically consists of
billions of nanometer scale diodes in consistent alignment
parallel 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 overwhelm a matched
impedance electrical load's own thermal noise.
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.
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. This means
that a variant of Maxwell's demon, Smoluchowski's
trapdoor, applied to electrons, will work.
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 have an endless supply of moving electrons
with nanometer scale negative entropy. 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 the microscale negative
entropy to ay desired level. Inefficiently rectified
intermittant 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 loose 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.
The concept was partially 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.
A more advanced test requires the assembly of arrays
containing a great number of nanometer scale diodes as
carbon nanotubes, selected to be semiconducting, placed
between Au and Al rails which would become anode and
cathode points.
A more practical diode array form is to nanofabricate
short general ~2 nm dia. C nanotube anodes vertically
spaced ~ 30nm in staggered rows on an n type InSb
substrate producing arrays of 10^11 diodes / cm^2 at 50%
efficiency this means a power density of ~100 watts / cm2.
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 kilometre 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 a 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 travellers,
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
creative people.
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 micro loans. These
appliances would be highly likely to support great
productivity gains in many uses.
Aloha,
Charles M. Brown
808-828-0297
Kilauea Kauai Hawaii
96754
