Scientists have created the first transistor, working on energy of heat
Physicists from Sweden, created the first transistor, in which the role media plays an electric signal, and the flow of heat, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
«We first introduced a logical device, transistor, in this case, whose work drives the heat, not electricity. Creating a capacitor, which can turn a temperature difference into electric current, we have wondered whether it is possible to use it for other purposes,» says Xavier Crispin (Crispin Xavier) from the University of linköping (Sweden).
Last year, as Crispin says, his team discovered an unusual organic polymer having a very interesting thermoelectric properties. Its negatively charged chains are very weakly react to changing temperatures, making them a mixture of positively charged ions, reacting strongly to freezing or heating, is transformed into the so-called thermocondensor.
This word scientists understand the device that can convert the temperature difference at its ends protivopolojnym into electric current. In other words, if you load a capacitor in a bucket with hot water, it is itself charged with electricity due to the fact that more mobile ions migrate toward the «hot» side of the capacitor and the filament of the polymer will remain in place.
Open the combination of substances, Crispin and his colleagues have wondered whether it is possible to use it to build more complex devices using heat as a storage medium. The fruit of these efforts was the creation of a hybrid electron-thermal transistor, which is controlled by the electrode made of this electrolyte plays the role of stopper.
In fact, it is the thermal analogue of the usual field-effect transistor when the temperature of the electrode increases, it becomes more and more positive charge. Depending on the type and devices of the transistor, this causes a shock or starts to go between «input» and «output» logical device or it is blocked.
As scholars have noted, all the interactions in this transistor can be put on a heat basis, which would create a whole new class of semiconductor logic devices. According to Crispin, his team developed polymer has a very high sensitivity to heat, up to 100 times higher than all other congeners that allows the use of transistors at its base as medical devices, «smart pixel» for infrared cameras and a number of other gadgets and devices.
Such devices, as the researchers note, will be able to work directly on the basis of the energy of solar heat and light without consuming electricity and functioning, even in conditions in which usually electronics does not work for physical reasons or for reasons of security.
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