Infrared power generation: UPDATES

This summer the Undergraduate Students Kyle Britton, Justin Kaczmar and Graham Gearhart joined Harkirat Mann and Brian Lang to do research with Dr. Scarel!  Kyle and Justin are working on the the angular dependence of infrared power generation, while Graham is studying the relationship between the output of the infrared source with time and the voltage produced by the device used to harvest infrared radiation.  In July, Harkirat and Brian went to the Center of Nanophase Materials Sciences at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (TN) to perform experiments with a laser emitting in the near infrared region.  Recently, a new paper from the group was accepted: H.S. Mann,Y. Schwab, B.N. Lang, J.L. Lancaster, R.J. Parise, and G. Scarel, “Effective thermoelectric power generation in an insulated compartment.  World J. Cond. Matter Phys. Vol. 4 (3), (2014).

Here is a figure from the paper: in thermoelectric power generation, the voltage trends in time follow faithfully the trends of temperature difference in the same time interval!  Simple but not trivial: in infrared power generation this symmetry is broken down!