"Smoking Gun" - finally!

[PaulLowrance]

Johnson's noise rectification.. Diode arrays...? With an electronic component miniaturisation, this "effect" gets allmost lost.

That's untrue. Take two objects made of the same thing. It could be anything, say carbon. Object #1 dimensions are X, Y, Z. Object #2 dimensions are X/2, Y/2, Z/2.  Object #2 has half the length, but one forth the cross sectional area. Therefore, the resistance of object #2 is twice of #1. Johnson noise is equal to sqrt(k * T * R * B). The only parameter that's different in the equation between object #1 and #2 is R, where the smaller object, #2, has twice the resistance. Therefore, the smaller object has sqrt(2) ~= 1.414 times more Johnson noise.

Although, the raw Johnson noise equation does not consider the bandwidth limiting parallel capacitance. Therefore we need to consider kTC noise, which equals sqrt(k * T / C). In this case, the only difference is parallel capacitance. Object #1 has four times the cross sectional area (four times C), but object #2 is half as thin (two times more C). Therefore, the smaller object, #2, has half the capacitance as object #1. Therefore, object #2, the smaller resistor, has half the capacitance. Therefore, the total noise for the smaller object is equal to kTC noise, which is caused by Johnson noise, equals sqrt(2) ~= 1.414 times the larger object.

So, in the end, the smaller object has sqrt(2) ~= 1.414 times more thermal noise.


A technical detailed science discuss without mathematics leads to ambiguity. That is why scientists throughout history have always exchanged letters containing mathematics, as it is difficult to argue with a math equation. If the person believes the math is incorrect, then he or she has the right to correct it.

PL

[PaulLowrance]

Hi AbbaRue,

I haven't studied electrets that much. Here's wikipedia on it -->

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electret

An Electret is equivalent to a permanent magnet, except it's an electric field instead of magnetic field. I think the reason they don't make capacitors with Electrets is the same reason they don't use PM's for the inductive material in inductors. The reason being is that a PM has exceptionally low permeability, and the Electret has exceptionally low permittivity.

Regards,
PL

[PaulLowrance]

I just added a bunch of voltage measurements taken in Oct. 2008 on the 156 diode array. And another thread on 52 diode array voltage measurements.

Scroll down to see "Recent Posts"
http://greenselfreliantenergy.com/forum/


PL

[Koen1]

Thanks for the info. I didn't know T Brown worked on rock batteries. I know John Hutchison is known for his rock batteries in addition to his custom made crystal batteries -->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNeshiY4ixI

Also Marcus Reid has similar types of batteries. I firmly believe such batteries are made of countless *natural* microscopic diodes. Remember, a diode is formed when two different elements come in contact, *any* two elements. It does not have to be silicon. Of course, some elements are better than others.

Well I think you're right there, or at least not far off at all.
Also, I thought you had read a lot of the Crystal Cell thread, there it is pointed out that Browns Cells, Hutchisons Cells, Reids Cells, are all considered
to be variations on the same theme, albeit with slightly different functional principles and often totally different materials. But perhaps I never really
pointed it out to you personally when we exchanged PMs? Well, anyway, I think there is a link.
And indeed I believe all such Cells basically have similar microdiode structures (or at least structural elements that behave more or less like diodes).

If we had a method of producing surfaces covered in diode array layers, effectively a huge number of rectifying diode bridges in the form of a large
surface film, that would be a great starting point for just about any ambient energy powered "battery".

Imagine just a layer of this stuff connected on the output side to a stack of small supercaps around which the film is wound, and then coated
in a layer that is perfectly suited to absorb specific wavelengths like infrared for example... That setup would effectively be a "battery" which
continually "recharges" itself from the heat of its environment.
The coating could be selected for whichever wavelength is most common in the specific local environment. The recent infrared microantenna film
springs to mind as an example of such a coating.

There's one active thread at this forum on the John Hutchison and Marcus Reid batteries where people are making their own. In fact, for over the past ... oh at least 6 months I've been doing some similar experiments on normal batteries such as Alkaline, where the Alkaline batteries have been electrically shorted the entire time. The goal is to see if there's a base minimum DC voltage and current the batteries reach. It is a known fact that all *real* matter, especially Alkaline batteries have countless natural diodes. The goal would be to get more diodes aligned in one direction. I theorized that a voltage potential could cause the diodes to align while the material is extremely hot. If the materials not hot, then perhaps over the years ambient thermal energy could slowly cause a small percentage of the atoms to migrate for diode alignments as they are influenced by batteries voltage. So what I'm thinking is that the natural diodes in the battery will cause a net DC current, which will slowly charge the battery.

Hmmm... interesting idea... inspired by the "electrinium" story of the reacted battery sludge being "electrinium" material, by any chance?
And natural diodes inside alkaline batteries... well... yes they're semiconductive compounds after reaction, but aren't most of those such
bad semiconductors that they don't really work as diodes untill relatively high voltages are applied? As far as I recall, only PbS is among
the more sensitive compound semiconds and that only occurs in batteries using lead and sulfuric acid... And then the internal polarisation
of the "microdiode" molecumes would appear to be opposed to the direction of electron flow inside the battery... Or am I off there?
Anyway, interesting idea. Lol and also fairly clear what thread I usually hang around in eh?

Shorting various types of batteries is about the extent of my diode battery experiments. One of these days I would like to connect my highly sensitive temperature gradient meter to see if the battery cools down. Here's the three cycles in such an experiment -->

1. Shorted the diode battery.
2. Connect a load to the battery.
3. Leave the battery disconnected-- open circuit.

And repeat the experiment while trying various amounts of resistance in step 2.  The temperature probe is touching the battery during all of the tests to see if and when the battery temperature drops below ambient temperature. Anyone can build this temperature gradient circuit and probe for about $10 to $20. You need two small thermistors (I paid $0.15 each at digikey.com), two fets (I'm using NTE452), three op-amps, and some R's and C's. You can detect temperature gradients less than 10uC (1/100000 C).

Most of the people in the Hutchison battery thread are getting power levels high enough relative to the size of the baked battery to detect a temperature drop. I have sent a private PM to two of the guys there. I don't know why they're not pursuing that simple measurement. They may think the energy is not coming from natural ambient thermal energy, but I disagree.

Well to be honest you never really put it this clearly in your PMs.
You did show up all of a sudden with a lot of text on calorimetrics, but we never really had a good deep discussion as to what exactly powers them, did we?
The indications on some of the Reid Cells were that they continued to work and produce very low amp output untill cooled below what was it, minus 200 degrees C
I seem to recall. That was not my observation, it was tested and observed by a third party and confirmed witness. The output did drop and the drop increased
with lower temperatures, untill at that temp it finally stopped producing output altogether. Or at least, as I recall; to be entirely sure I'd need to look up the test
report. Anyway, that would seem to indicate that at least some part of the output is not dependant upon temperature, and certainly that it is not all galvanic
reactions that produce the output because those just stop at what minus 20 degrees already? And I seem to recall that that was the main argument in
the little PM exchange we had back then, whether or not it was anything galvanic.
I am not opposed to the idea of the energy input coming from the environment in some way. Ambient heat is a good source, fine with me.
But gravitational fluctuations are also fine. I don't need it to be heat input per se. The important part is that we don't want anything galvanic going on.


All that aside, I like your diode array initiative and if we can work out a practical method to produce micro diode arrays
with highly sensitive pn junctions and incorporated isolated output electrode networks, that would be grand!

Best regards,
Koen

[PaulLowrance]

Hi there,

InSb would be a good choice, but all materials act as diodes at all applied voltage levels (mV, uV, pV, fV, etc.).  That's the diode square law, and also it's part of small signal diode modeling. I've placed less than 1uV DC (both polarities) on a silicon diode and it still rectified. Of course you need sensitive equipment to test it.

Thermal noise decreases with a drop in temperature, as you noted, but diode behavior also changes. Diode behavior is non linear through a wide range of temperatures, and there are abrupt changes in diode behavior at specific temperatures (depending on the material), as you noted in the Reid battery. It's difficult to say how a diode will behave at low temperatures, until you measure it. Same goes for high temperatures. So there are a lot of factors involved.

The diode battery (baked batteries, or whatever the name should be) is very intriguing, and anyone could help out with such research. There's an active thread somewhere at this forum. I cannot stress enough how important it is to include low temp gradient measurements, as in micro Celsius changes; i.e., try to see if the battery cools-- I outlined such an experiment in a previous post. The circuit is simple and inexpensive. There are several possibilities, such as the battery could cool while it's recovering (unloaded), or when it's being used (loaded), or when it's shorted. If there are electrochemical reactions, then it's possible the natural microscopic diodes could recharge it while the battery is recovering (unloaded), and thus such a battery would cool while recovering. I would agree that it's best to keep the electrochemical reactions as low as possible, but if testing for battery temperature changes then such electrochemical reactions aren't necessarily a bad thing.

PL