LED Overunity confirmed!

[Allen Burgess]

Here's an extremely exciting discovery from "Laserhacker's" site. I feel it deserves a new thread to discuss the recent finding. Click on the Hyperlink for the full story!

"For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that an LED can emit more optical power than the electrical power it consumes."

LED's efficiency exceeds 100%

[Allen Burgess]

Physics synopsis.

Physicists have known for decades that, in principle, a semiconductor device can emit more light power than it consumes electrically. Experiments published in Physical Review Letters finally demonstrate this in practice, though at a small scale.

The energy absorbed by an electron as it traverses a light-emitting diode is equal to its charge times the applied voltage. But if the electron produces light, the emitted photon energy, which is determined by the semiconductor band gap, can be much larger. Usually, however, most electrons create no photon, so the average light power is less than the electrical power consumed. Researchers aiming to increase the power efficiency have generally tried to boost the number of photons per electron. But Parthiban Santhanam and co-workers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge took a gentler approach, achieving power enhancement even though less than one electron in a thousand produced a photon.

The researchers chose a light-emitting diode with a small band gap, and applied such small voltages that it acted like a normal resistor. With each halving of the voltage, they reduced the electrical power by a factor of 4 , even though the number of electrons, and thus the light power emitted, dropped by only a factor of 2 . Decreasing the input power to 30 picowatts, the team detected nearly 70 picowatts of emitted light. The extra energy comes from lattice vibrations, so the device should be cooled slightly, as occurs in thermoelectric coolers.

These initial results provide too little light for most applications. However, heating the light emitters increases their output power and efficiency, meaning they are like thermodynamic heat engines, except they come with the fast electrical control of modern semiconductor devices. – Don Monroe

Copper Oxide Thermoelectric Generator Can Light LED - YouTube

[Allen Burgess]

LED'S Overunity.

The upshot of the attachment graph shows that 30 picowatts of wall power might illuminate a bank of LED'S bright enough for the human eye to make out a tiny speck of dim light in a darkened room. Placing the bank of LED'S in an oven heated to 275 degrees farenheit would more then slightly double the brightness. That's the heat it would take to generate the overunity. Not that great of a tradeoff!

The efficency to input inverse square proportion has value! Quatering the input while halfing the brightness, is a neat rule of thumb for guaging LED efficency! The inverse corolary of course implies that 4 times the power is required to double the brightness.

This inverse gauge is with 60 hz A.C. wall power. Our "Lasersaber" style pulsed Joule Ringers with their RC tanks on the transister bases have much greater efficencies from the higher kilohertz pulse frequencies, in the LED voltage range. The question is; Can get we attain OU from baking our Joule Ringer LED'S?

[Slider2732]

A solar oven may be one idea, for a freebie heating method
Throw thousands of them together in a black bathtub, arrange mirrors around, cover the top and see (perhaps) what happens.

[broli]

1 picowatt = 0.000000000001 watt

It's a great discovery but very far from a usable energy source.

[Allen Burgess]

LED solar cell

@Slider2732,

Here's a very straight foward video of an LED functioning as a photo voltaic cell:

Photovoltaic Cell with LED - YouTube

[charly2]

@Slider2732,

Here's a very straight foward video of an LED functioning as a photo voltaic cell:

Photovoltaic Cell with LED - YouTube

Thanks Allen for this interesting video, for a moment came to my mind a flat panel of leds on the roof exposed to the sun light.
In reverse of your graph, do you know how would be affected the efficiency when the temperature rise up? (workin the leds not emiting light but electricity).
Very interesting effect.

[Slider2732]

Yeah, I have an LED oscillator that runs via an I/R LED
Ha'penny solar oscillator - YouTube

Put an LED of any type to a couple of croc leads and a meter and point it at the sun (better to have various types to test).
Intriguing to think of a power boost of even fractions, rather than a 0.6V voltage drop in a circuit.

[Slider2732]

(oops, double post)

[Allen Burgess]

@Slider2732,

Very cool video! Charly2 asked if heating the I/R solar cell LED would increase the electrical output. The same question crossed my mind. Would you be willing to perform that experiment for us to see if the audible pulse rate increases with a rise in heat? You could hold a hairdryer to it set on high.

A positive result would allow us to place an LED solar collector at the focal point of a parabolic reflector dish. Exciting the LED lattice may help bond the photon as well as release it! This may result in an even more important breakthrough then Parthiban Santhanam's from MIT .

[charly2]

Thanks for the tip, I did it few minutes ago, it is almost 8:00pm so no sun light, but the room light was enough to get 0.430v, after 15 secs using the hairdryer the reading was 0.52v!!! , finally mother nature and its laws are with us
We need to make more tests on this.

[Slider2732]

Great result there Charly

I'll go for the heat from something metal and black in the sun I think. Hopefully the sun will be out (quite lucky here for good strong sun). If the rate of oscillator running does increase, we'll know via the radio...very cool. Thanks for the experiment idea !
The Ha'Penny has a battery input port, so i'll cover the I/R LED and then have less chance of melting the solder on the circuit lol. But it will remove thoughts of the transistor/other components heating up and affecting results.

Will post tomorrow what happens.

[Allen Burgess]

Experimental data.

@charly2,

Thank you for tackeling the experimental challenge with such speed and precision. Warp factor quantum leap achievement! I'm thrilled by the results. Can you upload a video of your groundbreaking discovery?

Lasersaber's Joule Ringer 120 volt LED bulbs could be set in the focal point of a parabolic reflector dishs, positioned so the temperature was held constant at 275 degrees farenheit, and the sunlight maximized for best solar collector output, then turned around and used as powerfull super efficient search lights at night, with the reflector dishes projecting a very strong beam. An integrated, super upscaled garden light!

The attachment has instructions for constructing a cheap solar oven from an old umbrella and aluminum foil. They could swival on the roof edge, up for day chargeing, down for yard illumination at night.

We need someone to measure the solar output voltage from a 120 volt LED bulb. I'll be back home to the shop on the 4th of April, so I can run the simple test then and upload a video of that with heat excited lattice photon bonding enhancement effect. Ausgesitnicht! The bulbs can simply turn over resting inside a semi circular heat refector collar for the outdoor or greenhouse effect. Split positive battery rotation can augment the solar charging.

[Lidmotor]

Interesting topic

@All
This is a very interesting topic and I have done some simple research into this already. I ran a few experiments again today. I am not seeing just heat as the reason that leds gather energy. I must be missing something. An IR led seems to work the best as an energy receiver but I could not get any results using the hair dryer method or heat from an object heated on the stove top. A candle flame is spectacular though. It is some wave length of light that is generated the does the trick. Here is a video of an IR led running one of my led oscillators off just a candle flame light.

Infrared LED and a candle powering Penny - YouTube

Lidmotor

[Slider2732]

Great demo video there...very cool.
Hmm..what if 1 candle power produced more than 1 candle power of resultant light

I conducted Allen's heating test today and have so far uploaded it to YouTube 3 times, failing in some regard each time. Had mad PC troubles today (Ubuntu upgrade to 11.10 broke the PC, so am running Puppy Linux).
If and when this latest MP4 variation makes it online, i'll post the link.

Suffice to say, LED's are looking to hold intriguing properties indeed