Two devices have been proposed to turn the Earth's night-time infrared emissions into a

source of power. At the moment the idea is a series of calculations rather than one prototype, let
alone two, but the thought experiments alone were enough to win publication in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. A crucial component of one idea is work forgotten since
the late 1960s.

A team at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences set out to take on the
challenge of how to produce clean, renewable energy at night for regions dependent on solar
power. Theoretically speaking it is possible to generate energy wherever there is a difference in
temperature. This includes the heat radiated back to space at night in the infrared part of the
spectrum.

"Sunlight has energy, so photovoltaics make sense; you're just collecting the energy. But
it's not really that simple, and capturing energy from emitting infrared light is even less
intuitive," says lead author Dr Steven J. Byrnes.

Clouds complicate the picture further, but Byrnes and his colleagues decided to focus on
conditions in deserts where this is seldom an issue.

Nevertheless, co-author Professor Frederico Capasso says, Its not at all obvious, at first,
how you would generate DC power by emitting infrared light in free space toward the cold. To
generate power by emitting, not by absorbing light, that's weird.

One concept Byrnes and Capasso propose consists of two plates, a hotter one on the
ground and a cold plate above it. In fact the temperature difference between the two would be
very small. The hotter plate would be the temperature of the Earth substantial at the end of a
sunny day, but cooling down in the course of the night. The cold plate would be made of a
material that cools very efficiently, radiating the heat it absorbs from the hotplate away almost as
soon as it gets it.

This approach is fairly intuitive because we are combining the familiar principles of heat
engines and radiative cooling, says Byrnes, although his definition of intuitive may refer more
to that of a physicist or engineer than the population as a whole.

In theory, if the cold plate can be kept cool the team show that it should be possible to
generate a few watts per square meter tiny compared to photovoltaic panels during daytime.
However, even this may be a problem since the cold plate would tend to warm towards the
temperature of the surrounding environment.

The team's second proposal is even more exotic. They suggest using tiny diodes and
antennas shrunk to the nanoscale to harvest really tiny energy differentials.

The key is in these beautiful circuit diagrams, says Capasso (see image below). We found
they had been considered before for another applicationin 1968 by J.B. Gunn, the inventor of
the Gunn diode used in police radarsand been completely buried in the literature and forgotten.
But to try to explain them qualitatively took a lot of effort.

The electrical noise that can pollute circuits occurs when components push current in
either direction. Diodes act like valves, letting current flow one way but not the other. If a diode
is at a higher temperature than a resistor it will push the current forwards, but not allow it to flow
back. If the resistor is made of the same efficiently emitting material used in the cold plate above
the electrons within it will be cooler than those in the rest of the circuit. You get an electric
current directly from the radiation process, without the intermediate step of cooling a
macroscopic object, says Byrnes.

If thousands of tiny circuits generating minute amounts of power in this way are added
together the result might be something we can use.

Not long ago, such an idea would have been entirely theoretical, but developments in
small-scale electronics, nanofabrication and new materials means that it should now be possible
to build such a device. Nevertheless, two classes of problems remain.

The first is technical The more power thats flowing through a single circuit, the easier it
is to get the components to do what you want. If youre harvesting energy from infrared
emissions, the voltage will be relatively low, says Byrnes. That means its very difficult to
create an infrared diode that will work well.

Byrnes thinks the solution here may lie in a mix of new diode devices suited to low
voltages and higher impedance circuit components that raise the voltage of operation.

Beyond this lies the economic challenge. The cost of battery storage has started to fall,
and some observers expect it to undergo the same sort of dizzying drop in price solar cells have
experienced in recent years. Moreover, the majority of solar thermal projects ideally suited to
the desert conditions in which Byrnes and Capasso's system might operate now come with hot
salt tanks that allow them to generate power through the night. Any design the Harvard team
produces will have to compete on price with such solutions, which may prove harder even than
the astonishing physics required to make it happen.

More exotic applications may also be a consideration. For example the Moon's lack of
atmosphere makes for much more dramatic heating and cooling, and storing solar power through
the two week lunar night could be a challenge, changing the economics for future bases.