Since Willis just published an essay on refrigeration systems and how the Earth has its own version, I thought this story might be fun and educational. Many people don’t know that Albert Einstein invented a refrigerator system in 1926 after he became world famous for his Theory of Relativity that was proven by solar eclipse measurements in 1922. I mean, after that what do you do for an encore? Build a fridge I guess.
About the same time, Einstein also became the most prominent critic of Quantum Theory which he had helped to create decades earlier. Given that, I think he’d find the idea of a Quantum refrigerator both hilarious and intriguing at the same time. – Anthony
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a solid-state refrigerator that uses quantum physics in micro- and nanostructures to cool a much larger object to extremely low temperatures.
What’s more, the prototype NIST refrigerator, which measures a few inches in outer dimensions, enables researchers to place any suitable object in the cooling zone and later remove and replace it, similar to an all-purpose kitchen refrigerator. The cooling power is the equivalent of a window-mounted air conditioner cooling a building the size of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“It’s one of the most flabbergasting results I’ve seen,” project leader Joel Ullom says. “We used quantum mechanics in a nanostructure to cool a block of copper. The copper is about a million times heavier than the refrigerating elements. This is a rare example of a nano- or microelectromechanical machine that can manipulate the macroscopic world.”
The technology may offer a compact, convenient means of chilling advanced sensors below standard cryogenic temperatures—300 milliKelvin (mK), typically achieved by use of liquid helium—to enhance their performance in quantum information systems, telescope cameras, and searches for mysterious dark matter and dark energy.
As described in Applied Physics Letters,* the NIST refrigerator’s cooling elements, consisting of 48 tiny sandwiches of specific materials, chilled a plate of copper, 2.5 centimeters on a side and 3 millimeters thick, from 290 mK to 256 mK. The cooling process took about 18 hours. NIST researchers expect that minor improvements will enable faster and further cooling to about 100 mK.
The cooling elements are sandwiches of a normal metal, a 1-nanometer-thick insulating layer, and a superconducting metal. When a voltage is applied, the hottest electrons “tunnel” from the normal metal through the insulator to the superconductor. The temperature in the normal metal drops dramatically and drains electronic and vibrational energy from the object being cooled.
NIST researchers previously demonstrated this basic cooling method** but are now able to cool larger objects that can be easily attached and removed. Researchers developed a micromachining process to attach the cooling elements to the copper plate, which is designed to be a stage on which other objects can be attached and cooled. Additional advances include better thermal isolation of the stage, which is suspended by strong, cold-tolerant cords.
Cooling to temperatures below 300 mK currently requires complex, large and costly apparatus. NIST researchers want to build simple, compact alternatives to make it easier to cool NIST’s advanced sensors. Researchers plan to boost the cooling power of the prototype refrigerator by adding more and higher-efficiency superconducting junctions and building a more rigid support structure.
This work is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
###
* P.J. Lowell, G.C. O’Neil, J.M. Underwood and J.N. Ullom. Macroscale refrigeration by nanoscale electron transport. Applied Physics Letters. 102, 082601 (2013); Published online 26 Feb. 26, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4793515.
** See 2005 NIST Tech Beat article, “Chip-scale Refrigerators Cool Bulk Objects,” at www.nist.gov/pml/div686/chip_scale_042105.cfm.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Interesting.
Will it make good ice for a G&T?
You use the fridge the cool the superconductors … you use the superconductors to supply power to the fridge … and you run the rest of your installation – say a magnetically-driven ships engine – using the superconducting material …
Sounds a bit perpetual motion, but I’m talking about a shift in efficiency, not magic. Would seem to offer a route that makes use of presently known low temp superconductors, since ambient temp superconductors seem to be … difficult.
How much power is required? i.e., if there was a window-sized unit, how much power would it take to cool a building the size of the Lincoln Memorial, and how much power would conventional AC units use?
Cool! 🙂
Cool technology. Of course the system must also be heating something; that must be the superconducting metal where the hottest electrons tunnel to, so that part would require cooling using conventional means.
can I cool my beer with this ?
I had no idea that electrons even had a temperature until I read about “the hottest electrons”.
What exactly does the temperature of an electron mean?
I like the way they refer to 300mK as “standard” cryogenic. Getting down to 300mK takes some serious engineering.
Going down from 290mK to 256mK doesn’t sound like a lot, but . . .
Well, I can’t complete that sentence. It would be interesting to read an explanation of the reasons why this would make a difference. And what happens at 100mK? 50mK? What new frontiers of science would be opened? Enquiring minds want to know.
“Cool”. Brilliant. With a bit more insulation …?
Just to be clear: Einstein did not win a Nobel for the Theory of Relativity. As the Nobel.org site states
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/
What happened was that in 1921, the Nobel Committee announced that it was going to award Einstein a Nobel for the Theory of Relativity. There was such an uproar from reputable scientists and institutions in Europe calling it false and accusing Einstein of plagiarism that the Nobel Foundation was forced to recall the reason for the prize, and find something else to give him a prize for; hence, his “services to Theoretical Physics” and the “law of the photoelectric effect.”
The Times of London has the detail in its archives—it’s voluminous over the year—but it’s behind a paywall now. The American press ignored it, so we still believe it, and I guess the worker bees at Wikipedia are hard at work promoting the myth.
How long before they can fit one to the bottom of a beer can?
That is “cool”. Too bad it looks like it still needs a cryogenic fluid to get the article down to the initial temperature. I was hoping it would be a way to cool laboratory sensors from room temp. Cryogenics are still quite expensive, but this should help get things even colder and make it less costly to keep things cryogenic. Decreasing thermal noise is always a good thing.
We live in Science Fiction.
I wonder how long it’ll take to scale this into a replacement for the household refrigerator. Would it reduce costs? Is it even feasible? Ooooooooh forget that, I want one to use as a heatsink on my computer!
Gosh, a temperature diode.
Seems like a worthwhile project which can pay scientific dividends.
Of course the theory of Relativity was not ‘proven’ by any measurements – it was supported, or rather, not falsified. We sceptics should be careful with our language (and our science) if we have any chance to rebuild it after the strains put upon it by the warmistas!
“The cooling power is the equivalent of a window-mounted air conditioner cooling a building the size of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
…1″ copper plate… from 290 mK to 256 mK. The cooling process took about 18 hours. ”
8 hours to loose 44 thousandths of a degree ?
Comparison does not seem to add up , unless you’re saying cooling the building on a time-scale like since the Holocene maximum.
Maybe the comparison is not explained too well. 😕
As soon as I saw this I thought of the MEMS technology I was recently reading about – MicroElectroMechanical Systems… and sure enough, one of the applications listed includes “heat exchangers”.
As soon as a new technology exists, someone runs along with a breakthrough using it. We do live in interesting times.
Then again… 100mK would be an interesting achievement. Isn’t anyone worried about reaching absolute zero and instantly freezing the entire planet anymore? I remember when that one was going around…
Check out Frank Znidarsic’s mathematically-sound method of using only Newtonian and Hamiltonian equations to directly calculate Planck’s constant, starting with this YouTube series:
Something so simple even High School students can understand–oh wait, the narrator IS a high school student!
(Warning–the formulation was obtained based on quantified results from cold fusion and anti-gravity experiments, so if you aren’t willing to considering those phenomena as possible, you probably won’t be open-minded enough to accept the rest, regardless of the robust mathematical simplicity.)
That’s really cool! (Pun intended. LOL)
From the earliest days of the microwave oven, I always wanted to be able to cool or freeze things with equal speed and ease. Maybe someday a “microwave” will include both functions. 🙂
Cool. Chip off the old block. (Do I get the million man coffee cup?)
Now that’s cool.
This post is just another reason to keep on turning to this site for interesting news about scientific discoveries. Thanks.
I want one of these for my DeLorean!
Tony Hawks had a rather similar idea…but with an Irish twist