Ron I had a look at the paper. There is not enough detail to make it worth the trouble.
Like you , I find the amazing thing is that it works at all in the MHz range- even if it is only (today) a very inefficient electrolyzer. This seems to be a case of intense non-ionizing radiation being made ionizing by the surface effects of a polarizing waveguide. However, rather than drop it altogether as a curiosity - the derivative concept previously alluded to has not yet been shot-down - i.e. that his invention could be VERY useful, in the event that sunlight could be efficiently downshifted to RF. That kind of hybrid system might still be valid. Think about it this way. 1) Sunlight can be downshifted to terahertz at 99+% efficiency, i.e. converted to heat. This radiation can even be made semi-coherent by using some forms of carbon (graphite) as the sink (target) since forms of graphite (despite its blackness ;-) is not a blackbody radiator, and emits mostly in a single preferred spectrum. 2) Terahertz waves, being of higher energy photonic quality - should, in principle - be amenable to downshifting to RF with little loss. Can this be made semi-coherent? 3) If one could go from sunlight to RF in two steps by using a terahertz intermediary, and get a super-radiant output (semi-coherency) and with only minimal losses, then the Kanzius finding becomes *extremely valuable* despite its comparative low efficiency (compared to DC). Anyway - that is a gross over-simplification, but this invention could still allow one to squeeze double the available energy from solar energy - and most importantly to do so in a transportable form (H2) . That would be compared to solar cell arrays. Jones
