Thermocrystals

Discuss the technical details of an "open source" community-driven design of a polywell reactor.

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DeltaV
Posts: 2245
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:05 am

Thermocrystals

Post by DeltaV »

Copped this link from NASASpaceFlight.com. Manipulating thermal phonons.

How to treat heat like light
Most conventional materials allow heat to travel in all directions, like ripples expanding outward from a pebble dropped in a pond; thermocrystals could instead produce the equivalent of those ripples only moving out in a single direction, Maldovan says. The crystals could also be used to create thermal diodes: materials in which heat can pass in one direction, but not in the reverse direction. Such a one-way heat flow could be useful in energy-efficient buildings in hot and cold climates.

Other variations of the material could be used to focus heat — much like focusing light with a lens — to concentrate it in a small area. Another intriguing possibility is thermal cloaking, Maldovan says: materials that prevent detection of heat, just as recently developed metamaterials can create “invisibility cloaks” to shield objects from detection by visible light or microwaves.
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hanelyp
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Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:50 pm

Post by hanelyp »

A thermal diode sounds a lot like a form of Maxwell's Demon.

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