I think that systems have always radiated heat energy by the blackbody method. That is one way for a diode to act as a cooler, but this only works if the radiated energy is directed toward a cooler region of space.
In one way of looking at it: All of the electrical energy dissipated by an insulated, lone diode in space would be emitted in one form of radiation or the other. Light or infrared, etc. would be emitted in an amount equal to the power input. Perhaps they have found a way to enhance the light part of the spectrum at the expense of the heat portion. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Rocha <danieldi...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 12:58 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Over unity at MIT The diode is working as a cooler. 2012/2/28 Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> According to the second law you can only get a system to do "work" if parts of the system are at different temperatures. In this situation the system is a diode and it does work by converting heat into light. It is hard to tell from the description, but I am guessing the entire diode is at an elevated temperature. harry On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Daniel Rocha <danieldi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Why do you think it would violate the 2nd law? I don't understand. > > 2012/2/28 Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> >> >> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Daniel Rocha <danieldi...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > Pay attention at this: >> > >> > " Experiments directly confirm for the first time that this behavior >> > continues beyond the conventional limit of unity electrical-to-optical >> > power >> > conversion efficiency." >> > >> > It is above the conventional, not that it produces energy out of >> > nothing. >> > This is just a way of saying that it exceeded expectation of light >> > emission >> > for a LED. >> >> >> Yes. It uses electricity to change heat into light. The abstract: >> >> "A heated semiconductor light-emitting diode at low forward bias >> voltage V<kBT/q is shown to use electrical work to pump heat from the >> lattice to the photon field. Here the rates of both radiative and >> nonradiative recombination have contributions at linear order in V. As >> a result the device’s wall-plug (i.e., power conversion) efficiency is >> inversely proportional to its output power and diverges as V >> approaches zero. Experiments directly confirm for the first time that >> this behavior continues beyond the conventional limit of unity >> electrical-to-optical power conversion efficiency." >> >> >> however, wouldn't this require a violation of the second law of >> thermodynamics? >> >> Harry >> > > > > -- > Daniel Rocha - RJ > danieldi...@gmail.com > -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
