SBIR Phase I: A Radical New Alternative to Semiconductor Photodiodes

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力涉及到太阳能行业的颠覆性变化，它有可能使现有最好的太阳能电池的效率翻倍，同时显著降低其成本。可再生能源对能源独立至关重要，更重要的是，对人类社会的长期生存能力至关重要，因为人类社会正面临着石油、天然气和煤炭等碳氢化合物能源不可避免的枯竭。拟议中的项目利用了物理学研究中使用的已知技术，特别是高能物理加速器，例如在费米国家加速器实验室或欧洲核子研究中心的大型强子对撞机中发现的那些。这种方法是基于使用金属的热离子发射作为电力来源，而现有的技术只使用更昂贵的半导体产生的光电流。这种转变不仅可以提供更高的效率，还可以缩短“能量返回”，这是指设备产生与生产中使用的能量相同的能量所需的时间。该项目的目标是通过生产一种能够高效发电的电池来证明这种新方法，并由标准实验室独立测量和评估以验证其结果。从这个起点出发，设备优化和进一步开发将为能源独立提供一种新的竞争方法。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project involves a disruptive change to the solar energy industry by potentially doubling the efficiency of the best available solar cells while, at the same time, significantly reducing their cost. Renewable energy sources are critical to energy independence and, importantly, to the long-term viability of human society which is faced with the inevitable depletion of hydrocarbon based energy sources, such as oil, gas, and coal.The proposed project leverages known technologies that are used in physics research, specifically in high energy physics accelerators, such as those found in Fermi National Accelerator Lab or at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The approach is based on using thermo-ionic emission from metals as the source of electric power, in contrast to existing technologies that only use photo-generated currents from more expensive semiconductors. This shift can provide not only higher efficiency, but also a shorter "return-on-energy" which is defined as the time it takes for the device to produce as much energy as was used in its production. The project goal is to demonstrate this new approach by producing a cell that can produce electricity with high efficiency and be measured and evaluated independently by a standards laboratory to validate its result. From this starting point, device optimization and further development will provide a new competing approach to energy independence.