Sonoluminescence produces light and electricity at ambient temperature!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) May 11, 2004 --

Sonoluminescence (SL) is known to produce light from bubbles in water under ultrasound. Currently, SL is thought caused by high air temperatures from the compression heating in the bubble during collapse. However, the bubbles are not filled with air, as there is no time at ultrasonic frequencies for the air dissolved in water to diffuse into the bubble. Indeed, bubbles nucleated in water under ultrasound are filled with condensable water vapor. By Le Chatelier�s principle, water vapor in 2-phase equilibrium with the liquid bubble walls maintains ambient temperature and vapor pressure as the bubble volume vanishes in bubble collapse. Thus, SL light is produced at ambient temperature � not at high temperature.

SL light at ambient temperature is explained by treating the nanobubble nucleated in the expansion phase of the ultrasonic wave as a quantum electrodynamics (QED) cavity. At ambient temperature, the thermal kT energy of atoms in the bubble wall is usually emitted as electromagnetic (EM) radiation at far infrared (IR) frequencies. But the nanobubble has an EM resonant frequency in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV), and therefore the far IR radiation is suppressed from atoms within the penetration depth of the resonant VUV wave standing across the nanobubble. In a QED cavity, the suppressed IR energy loss is conserved by the gain in EM energy at the resonant VUV frequency of the nanobubble, the process called cavity QED induced EM radiation. In effect, IR radiation is frequency up-converted to the VUV as the consequence of conserving EM energy in a QED cavity.



The VUV radiation produces light and electricity from the atoms in the penetration depth of the surface of the QED cavity. But solid state nano devices < 100 nm that simulate SL only produce low level light and electricity. A large number of nano devices are required to be packaged to achieve practical levels of light and electricity.

Cavity QED induced EM radiation is protected by US patent pending. Only IR radiation from thermal blackbody radiation is required to produce low level light and electricity, but the 2nd law is not violated. Indeed, low-level electricity and light are powered by IR radiation at ambient temperature.



Currently, funding combined with expertise in fabrication of nano devices is solicited.