OREANDA-NEWS Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley created the engine, the installation of which on drones will allow them to fly for several days without recharging.

Over the past 15 years, the efficiency of heat-to-electricity conversion using thermovoltaics has reached 23 percent and has not risen anymore. But innovative physical insight allowed researchers to raise this effectiveness to 29 percent. Using the new design now scientists are planning to achieve efficiency of 50 percent in the near future, using new scientific schemes.

According to scientists, the mirror creates a dense infrared fluorescent photon gas inside the solar cell. This phenomenon gives additional current and increases the power of the device. In fact, this solves one of the biggest problems in thermophotoelectronics: how to use thermal photons that have too little energy to produce electricity. It turns out that the mirror can reflect these low-energy particles to heat up the heat source, giving a second chance to create a high energy photon and generate electricity. This phenomenon leads to an increase in the efficiency of the source to significant values.