Les technologies de The Imaging Source

Ambient Heat To Electricity Conversion

The Imaging Source Europe GmbH presents a new technology to convert ambient heat into electricity, while at the same time cooling down the surrounding area.

No other external energy is required besides ambient heat.

This new technology resolves several long known problems and opens opportunities for chip cooling without heat sinks, powering portable devices without batteries, designing tunable radiation sources in LIR and building new energy harvesting and cooling devices.

This technology proves that cooling does not require the input of external energy.

New ways of energy harvesting and cooling

This article introduces a new technology to convert ambient heat into electricity. A metal surface with a micro-structure is used to carry out the energy conversion. While the energy conversion occurs, the environment cools down.

The following photo shows a sample device. The working point of the micro-structure area was designed for an ambient temperature of 20°C/68°F. Both areas are made of gold. The micro-structure area consists of about a quarter of a million single elements.

The following photos were taken with a thermal camera and macro lens. The structured areas therefore appear larger than in the previous photo. The following three photos show three different working modes of the micro-structure.

Micro-structure as energy converter and cooling device

This photo shows that the micro-structure area is cooler than the surrounding area. While the ambient heat is converted into electricity, the structured area cools down. The structured area was terminated with a matching impedance.

Micro-structure as thermal mirror

This photo shows that the micro-structure area is hotter than the surrounding area. The structured area was not terminated and therefore reflects the ambient heat better than its surrounding (works like a mirror).

Micro-structure out of working point

This photo shows the micro-structure area while it is used outside its working point. This working mode was achieved by cooling down the whole device to -5°C/23°F. The micro-structure and surrounding area are almost in thermal equilibrium.