Researchers from the University of New South Wales hav revealed a major breakthrough in renewable energy technology by using Earth’s radiant infrared heat to generate electricity in the dark. A team from the UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering published the results of their research into radiant infrared heat, describing a major breakthrough in producing electricity from so-called “night-time solar power” – heat radiated as infrared light. The researchers used a semiconductor device known as a thermoradiative diode – which is composed of materials found in night-vision goggles – to generate power from the emission of infrared light.
And though the amount of power generated at this early stage of the research is very small – around 100,000 times less than that supplied by a solar panel – the UNSW researchers nevertheless believe that their results can be improved. The research, published this week in the journal ACS Photonics , serves as a vital confirmation of what had previously been a theoretical process. And it is the first step towards developing specialised and more efficient devices that the UNSW researchers believe could one day capture infrared energy at a much larger scale. “We have made an unambiguous demonstration of electrical power from a thermoradiative diode,” said Ned Ekins-Daukes , associate professor and team lead.
“Using thermal imaging cameras you can see how much radiation there is at night, but just in the infrared rather than the visible wavelengths. What we have done is make a device that can generate […]
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Image: UNSW
