Today Applied Physics Letter has published a paper reporting the discoveries made by a group of researchers at JMU. The paper is entitled “Heat recovery mechanism in the excitation of radiative polaritons by broadband infrared radiation in thin oxide films”. Anita Vincent-Johnson and John Bridstrup, undergraduate students in Physics, and Kyle Vasquez, who graduated in Chemistry last Spring, worked on the project between Summer 2010 and Summer 2011. Andrew Masters of Custom Thermoelectric (Bishopville - MD) developed the devices. Harry Hu contributed in improving the set up for the measurements. Giovanna Scarel led the team. The hope of the authors is that this research would trigger new work in buildig cells capable to harvest infrared radiation and convert it into electricity. Since infrared radiation is available day and night, the cells should work without interruption.
