Company Claims New Chip Converts Heat To Electricity

Dster76 writes to tell us that the startup, Eneco, has invented a solid state energy conversion chip which they claim will be able to convert heat directly into electricity or reach temperatures of -200 C when given an electrical current. While such a device could revolutionize many aspects of computing I'll keep my skeptic hat on for the time being.

Comments

not bogus, not necessarily "disruptive technology"

[jetpeach]

So the technology is definitely hyped up in the article, but this is not bogus like oh so many of these types of articles on slashdot are. I'm in an electrical engineering PhD program and the ideas presented in the article are sound (i.e. there isn't any breakage of the 1st law of thermodynamics and no magic magnets involved!). The obvious question is what is this material that replaces a vaccum, this "properly selected semiconductor thermoelectric that is thick enough to support a significant temperature differential between the emitter and the collector in order to achieve efficiencies of practical interest" as this is the key to the technology. If they indeed have found a material to do this this is a very interesting technology that probably will make it into our consumer products, and possibly "soon".