In the 1960s, physicist Richard Feynman effectively stopped further research after declaring in a series of lectures that Brownian motion, or the thermal motion of atoms, could not do useful work.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas have developed a new non-linear circuit to generate clean energy. It works with graphene. Phys.org reports.
The authors noted that when the storage capacitors have an initial charge equal to zero, then the circuit receives energy from the thermal environment to charge them.
“In fact, extracting useful work from random fluctuations in a system in thermal equilibrium was considered impossible for a long time. In the 1960s, the famous American physicist Richard Feynman actually stopped further research after he said in a series of lectures that Brownian motion , or the thermal motion of atoms, cannot do useful work,” the scientists said.
However, they prove that Feynman missed something very important. In particular, the fact that the thermal fluctuations of free-standing graphene, when connected to a circuit with diodes that have non-linear resistance and storage capacitors, actually do useful work, charging the storage capacitors.
“Now we are focusing on developing a device called the Graphene Energy Harvester (or GEH). The GEH uses a negatively charged sheet of graphene suspended between two metal electrodes. When the graphene is flipped, it causes a positive charge on the top electrode. When it is reversed, it positively “charges” the bottom electrode, creating an alternating current. When the diodes are connected to each other, allowing current to flow in both directions, separate paths are provided in the circuit, creating a pulsating current that directly works on the load resistor,” added the study author.
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Source: korrespondent
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