Mechanooptical conversion
Due to
- high pressures being easily generatable in gem-gum systems and
- electronic states being tunabe by pressures
it should by possible to excite electronic states by
merely applying sufficient pressure onto the right atomical structures.
For human visible wavelengths transition metal F-centers in gemstones are of interest since
many of these have energy transitions in this range.
Contents
Active vs passive
Beside …
- for active colored light emission F-centers are also interesting just
- for passive color light absorption.
Both active and passive are relevant for display technology.
But this page is about energy conversion between mechanical & optical. Not stopping in the middle.
For discussion of the passive part see: Color emulation, Optical effects, ...
Side-note:
There is still energy conversion involved in passive color, but its never harvested.
Specifically energy conversion ...
- from natural optical energy
- to electronic excitation and then
- to uncaught thermal energy
Photonic steampunk
One idea would be to have a dead end of an optical fiber and
pass by with an attachment chain (over some stretch of the fiber) electronically excited material
in such a way that the dragging by catalyses a radiation emitting electronic de-excitation.
(This could probably be combined with laser like stimulated emission.)
At an other location along the attachment chain the material is electronically re-excited.
Electronically re-excited either by:
- mechanical means (like applying very high pressure) or
- electronic means or (it's electrooptical conversion with a mechanical twist)
- in any other suitable way.
Note that this approach with a chain only makes sense if (rapid) in-place-re-excitation is a bottleneck.
(Kinda hope so, transporting metastable electronic excitations on an nanoscale attachment chain sounds kinda cool. Like photonic steampunk)
Long enough phosphorescent decay time needed:
The phosphorescent transition will need to have a long enough decay time to be mechanically transportable
- from excitation-site
- to (catalyzed) de-excitation-site.
Maybe with advanced atomically precise manufacturing capabilities
(and fine tunable unusually large intermolecular forces)
a lot bigger range of phosphorescent systems will be acessible/developable.
(TODO: Investigate design of phosphorescent centers assuming advanced gem-gum technology is available.)
Machine phase preventing photo-bleaching:
Having the photoactive molecules in machine phase may make it possible to avoid "photobleaching" (photoactive molecules taking damage) entirely.
(wiki-TODO: Add a sketch of this idea.)
Radio wave generation by mechanically rotating dipoles
The idea here is to create a bunch of nanoscale rotors carrying a dipole moment,
and then spinning them in sync to generate an electromagnetic wave.
This may also work in reverse as a receiver for signal or power.
Visible light is too high a frequency to be reachable by this but radio waves are.
The limit lies likely somewhere in the terahertz gap. (wiki-TODO: To investigate)
Operation as phased array
By intentional and properly coordinated out-of-sync rotation one can create phased array effects
controlling the emmission/reception craracteristics (where the EM waves are emmitted-to/received-from).
Limits set by material strength and friction losses
To avoid exorbitant levels of friction from high speeds some form of levitation is likely needed for higher frequencies.
Also at ~3km/s tangential speed one hits the unsupported rotating ring speed limit.
Providing support excludes all sorts of ultra low friction levitation which all can not provide high support forces.
Thus going beyond that limit only short bursts with long cool-off times should be possible.
Or very tiny well cooled volumes.
Dipole moment
A question here is how much of a (sufficiently stable) dipole moment can be created in
a machine phase dry PPV vacuum system before charges become too unstable and recombine too rapidly.
Can (and if how much) a nano-capacitor exceed the dipole moment of a dipole moment of
strategic placement of electropositive and electronegative elements?
(TODO: Investigate this.)
Optomechanical conversion
Related: Diamondoid solar cell
Early optomechaical conversion
There are molecules that change their conformation (shape) when
receiving a quantum of light ans changing electronic structure.
What is the influence of mechanical load on these shape transitions? That is:
How does the probability of a flip drop with increasing load (putting the flipped state in a higher energy state).
The idea is not to covalently cross-link two surfaces via shape conversion molecules!
A single molecule could not make the push and usually all molecules won't get excitated at the same time.
The idea is rater to covalently link molecules only on one surface and have only weak interactions with the other side.
This way for a practical actuator many many molecules can be put in parallel, such
that all can flip individually slowly accumulating a higher global energy state and global force.
Advanced optomechanical conversion (maybe)
Crystolecules containing F-centers may deform on excitation of that center.
Energy might be extractible via gearing down this motion.
The same strategy as for early optomechaical conversion should be employable.
