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"230%" electrically-ultra-efficient LED from MIT
- helveticaman 15y ago"However, while MIT's diode puts out more than twice as much energy in photons as it's fed in electrons, it doesn't violate the conservation of energy because it appears to draw in heat energy from its surroundings instead." This actually sounds legit. Keep in mind, 69 picowatts is next to nothing, so it's anybody's guess whether this will scale.
- jonmrodriguez 15y agoA better title might be "new LED cools its surroundings" or "new LED partially powered by lattice vibrations". It's the cooling effect that's really interesting, not some terminology-abusing claim to >100% efficiency.
- mc32 15y agoYeah, this sounds really good. Unlike incandescent lights which heat up their surroundings via heat dissipation, this one would cool its surroundings via heat absorption and conversion to light.
- disc 15y agoI might go with "new LED converts ambient energy into light" though any of these are better than the link-bait headline Wired has. /grumble-grumble-hardware-engineer
- BjoernKW 15y agoCouldn't such LEDs be used as incredibly efficient heat sinks? I presume that once it's possible to deploy those LEDs on large scale they should be much more efficient than traditional cooling devices. Moreover, they might be used for energy extraction. The heat extracted from the surroundings is converted into light, which in turn could be converted into electricity.