Via
NewAtlas.com:
Silicon chip breaks "blackbody limit" to produce more electricity from heat than thought possible
University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Mathieu Francoeur has discovered a way to produce more electricity from heat than thought possible with his Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer Device(Credit: Dan Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering)
...The blackbody limit (formulated in 1900 by German physicist Max Planck) is a theory which describes the maximum amount of energy that can be produced from thermal radiation (heat), but when objects get very, very close, the law breaks down and thermal transfer from one object to another increases exponentially.
Associate professor Mathieu Francoeur and his team created a tiny chip (5 x 5 mm), comprising two silicon wafers with a stable gap between them of 100 nanometers and held in a vacuum. The team then heated one wafer while cooling the other, and this in turn created a heat flux which can be used to generate an electric current. The heat flux method of generating electricity isn't new in and of itself, but the method the team developed for maintaining such a microscopically close, uniform hesitance between the silicon wafers is...
