New electronic Component?

[fritznien]

I have had thoughts on this same idea.  I once asked the question on a forum:
"What would happen if you used a capacitor with varying plate spacing?"
If you charge the cap and then move the plates closer together in theory it should increase the voltage. 
As you charge a cap. a static charge is built up between the plates that draws the plates together.
In theory if the plates were made in a spring loaded manner they would be brought closer together by charging them.

I had an interesting experience on this subject that caused me to ask these questions. 
I made my own cap. out of Al Foil and plastic drop sheet material. 
I tried charging the cap. using a bridge rectifier made from four 1000 Volt 6 Amp diodes, and the diodes kept malfunctioning.
I went through about 5 diodes this way and at no time was the voltage I was rectifying even close to 1000 volts.
In fact I even had them burn out using only a 120 volt input from an isolation transformer. 
And the diodes never even had a chance to get warm before they malfunctioned,
so it wasn't because the current drain passed 6 amps and over heated them.
So I can't explain how such high value diodes kept burning out. 
But I noticed that every time I started charging my home made cap. the cap. would shrink as the static charge
would cause the foil plates to be drawn closer together, compressing the plastic sheet material.   
I made 2 of these caps. both were made with two 6 foot strips of Al foil about 12 inches wide. 
The plastic comes in 3 grades of thickness for construction, this was the thinnest of the 3 grades.
I lay them out of the floor and rolled them as tight as I could. 
After the diodes malfunctioned I tested the caps with an ohm meter to see if the plates had shorted out,
but they seemed fine.  I got so mad because the diodes kept frying that I ripped one apart with my hands. LOL!
 
Anyway I'm glad someone else is asking similar questions about caps. 
A cap with an elastic dielectric may be a new way of tapping into free energy.

If you vary the spacing the C will vary, the closer the plates the higher C.
assuming you disconnect the source first,the the voltage goes down as the plates get closer.
as you have seen pos and neg attract so its going to take energy to separate charged plates.
as for you diodes i think you cooked them with the surge current when you first completed the cct.
you put 120 vac to a diode in series with a cap, the diode drops about point 7 volts and an uncharged cap zero.
currant is limited by the inductance and resistance in your transformer. how much currant can your
transformer deliver? in future add a ressister to limit the currant.
fritznien

[Popcan]

I kept looking up more on it. In terms of dielectrics, one of the best for the money is pure distilled water, with a Dielectric constant of over 80.
Also found out that a device similar to mine, but nanoscopic and using a ferroelectric insulator, is used in ferroelectric RAM memory, but only to use as memory, not as a high voltage device like I planned.

I'll test it out once I can get some nice dielectric material. I always wanted to build one of T.T. Brown's Gravitators as well, so it'll be good. Also, the EESTOR super-capacitor uses BT as well, at i think 345 kV potentials.

[AbbaRue]

Well I fried about 4 of them using my home made cap as a DC filter.
I had both AC and DC current and I only wanted the AC to pass to the next stage of my circuit.
On the other side of the cap. filter I was lighting a 100 Watt bulb. 
I spend a lot of time doing electronic research, I have quite a bit of equipment.
I have an Oscilloscope, Frequency generator, Frequency counter, Inductance meters and capacitance meters,
plus about a dozen other meters.  I'm quite versed in electronics,
and I know that an uncharged cap. acts as a short circuit when it is first energized.
There is no way I could have fried the 1000 volt 6 Amp diodes because of the sudden current surge, while
cap. was in series with a 100 W Light Bulb, also the capacitance of my home made caps. was less then 10 Mfd
so even if I did connect it directly to the bridge rectifier, it wouldn't have produced a high enough current level.
 
No there is definitely something else going on in those home made caps. 
I have never went back and did some more research on them, but that puzzle is always left in the back of my mind.

I also have done some googling in the past to see if I could find any one else experimenting
with a cap. that changes capacitance while charging, like these do, and was unable to find anything relating to it. 
This is a new way of looking at caps. 

It's very simple to duplicate, try it yourself, connect a load across the output so you don't get too high an amp. surge. 
You will see as I did that the diodes mysteriously keep malfunctioning. 
I  know of only 2 ways to fry a diode, too much voltage and/or too much current, and I, know it's not the current.
As far as I know too much current always fries a diode by overheating it, and that takes time. 
Were as too much voltage can instantly fry a diode by blowing a hole into the junction,
that is why I believe high voltage was the cause. 
Maybe an oscillation took place between the cap and the transformer which caused a high voltage spike.

[AbbaRue]

I thought I should mention this. 
After I got rid of the home made caps, I continued with my research using regular caps.
I used many different values of caps from 0.98 mfd. microwave caps, to 40 mfd.  AC motor caps.
And I never had another diode burn out, even after dozens of hours of research, using the very same
circuit hookup I had with the home made caps. using them as DC filters, to light a 100 W bulb. 
And not as DC storage devices.

[Nihilanth]

The cubic design with one plate per side seems like it would simply result in a shorted capacitor, cutting the corners of the dielectric, through the plates & out through the corners of the other side. Although I suppose this could be fixed by making the dielectric into a plus shape from the top-down perspective.