Re:Rice University researchers propose a way to boost solar ...
by skosch on Friday August 09, 2019 @10:07PM
(#20659719)
The article doesn't provide very much detail, but it's absolutely possible to absorb multiple low-energy photons and emit fewer higher-energy ones, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-harmonic_generation – and apparently carbon nanotubes can do this as well.
Re:Rice University researchers propose a way to boost solar ...
by Retric on Saturday August 10, 2019 @08:08PM
(#20665342)
> This heats up the nanotubes, which then emit visible photons
Critically these photons are not heating up the material. It’s like saying photons reflecting off a mirror heat it. No, the photons that are not reflected do heat the mirror, but not the reflected ones. (At least mostly.)
I'm a bit skeptical that that would work. Otherwise you could build a perpetual motion machine by having the nanotubes in a hot room and running your perpetual motor off a solar cell powered by the light.
My guess is when the article says emit light they mean emit infra red light / radiation rather than visible. The article doesn't really make sense to me - I imagine someone got confused by the physics rather than it being an actual breakthrough in energy generation. I note the article says "propose a way to build" rather than having actually built something that works.