There’s heat
everywhere: coming from you, from your devices, from the sun itself. But
because we don’t have a way to capture it, most of that ambient heat is wasted.
If we could harness its power, that would be a very big deal — it could lessen
our reliance on existing resources and ease our toll on the environment.
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Researchers
have been trying to crack this nut for a while, but a team from King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia has just gotten
the closest yet — and they’re using a mysterious phenomenon called quantum
tunneling to do it.
have been trying to crack this nut for a while, but a team from King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia has just gotten
the closest yet — and they’re using a mysterious phenomenon called quantum
tunneling to do it.
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The big
obstacle to using waste heat as energy is that it requires a very, very small
antenna. That’s because infrared heat has a very small wavelength and the
smaller the wavelength, the smaller the antenna needed to capture them. For
example, AM radio signals have a much longer wavelength than, say, cell-phone
signals: AM radio broadcasts in the hertz range and cell phones broadcast in
the megahertz range, which means the waves of cell signals are around a million
times shorter than those of radio.
obstacle to using waste heat as energy is that it requires a very, very small
antenna. That’s because infrared heat has a very small wavelength and the
smaller the wavelength, the smaller the antenna needed to capture them. For
example, AM radio signals have a much longer wavelength than, say, cell-phone
signals: AM radio broadcasts in the hertz range and cell phones broadcast in
the megahertz range, which means the waves of cell signals are around a million
times shorter than those of radio.
That’s why
your radio antenna needs to be longer than the one inside your phone. Infrared
heat? That gets into terahertz, which is a million times shorter than
megahertz. Your smartphone antenna is positively massive in comparison to what
you’d need to capture far-infrared waves.
your radio antenna needs to be longer than the one inside your phone. Infrared
heat? That gets into terahertz, which is a million times shorter than
megahertz. Your smartphone antenna is positively massive in comparison to what
you’d need to capture far-infrared waves.
But even
after you manage to make an antenna small enough, there’s another problem with
harnessing heat for energy. Infrared waves are so small that they actually
oscillate too fast for your average semiconductor to keep up. “There is no
commercial diode in the world that can operate at such high frequency,”
says Atif Shamim, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researcher
and the leader of the new project. “That’s why we turned to quantum
tunneling.”
after you manage to make an antenna small enough, there’s another problem with
harnessing heat for energy. Infrared waves are so small that they actually
oscillate too fast for your average semiconductor to keep up. “There is no
commercial diode in the world that can operate at such high frequency,”
says Atif Shamim, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researcher
and the leader of the new project. “That’s why we turned to quantum
tunneling.”
Quantum
tunneling works on a principle of quantum mechanics that says tiny particles
like electrons don’t have just one location or velocity — instead; they’re just
fuzzy swarms of probabilities. That means that if an electron is near a
barrier, it’s entirely possible for it to — poof! — appear on the other side,
simply because there’s some probability that it was already there in the first
place. There’s no actual “tunneling” happening in quantum tunneling,
but it sure seems that way.
tunneling works on a principle of quantum mechanics that says tiny particles
like electrons don’t have just one location or velocity — instead; they’re just
fuzzy swarms of probabilities. That means that if an electron is near a
barrier, it’s entirely possible for it to — poof! — appear on the other side,
simply because there’s some probability that it was already there in the first
place. There’s no actual “tunneling” happening in quantum tunneling,
but it sure seems that way.
Quantum
tunneling happens most reliably when there’s a barrier separating two
conducting materials — particles “tunnel” through the barrier and
keep on going. The KAUST team created such a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diode
by putting an insulating barrier of aluminum oxide between a conducting layer
of gold on one side and titanium on the other. Because that barrier is only a
nanometer thin, it’s able to turn very, very small wavelengths like those of
infrared heat into usable electric current. To guide the energy to the barrier,
the team created a bowtie-shaped nanoantenna that surrounded the barrier
between two slightly overlapped metallic arms.
tunneling happens most reliably when there’s a barrier separating two
conducting materials — particles “tunnel” through the barrier and
keep on going. The KAUST team created such a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diode
by putting an insulating barrier of aluminum oxide between a conducting layer
of gold on one side and titanium on the other. Because that barrier is only a
nanometer thin, it’s able to turn very, very small wavelengths like those of
infrared heat into usable electric current. To guide the energy to the barrier,
the team created a bowtie-shaped nanoantenna that surrounded the barrier
between two slightly overlapped metallic arms.
The team
proved their device could work by shooting it with an infrared laser. It
successfully produced voltage — not a ton of it, but enough to show that it
wasn’t just a fluke. “This is just the beginning—a proof of concept,”
says Shamim. “We could have millions of such devices connected to boost
overall electricity generation.”
proved their device could work by shooting it with an infrared laser. It
successfully produced voltage — not a ton of it, but enough to show that it
wasn’t just a fluke. “This is just the beginning—a proof of concept,”
says Shamim. “We could have millions of such devices connected to boost
overall electricity generation.”
