Is thermo-ionic emission at room temperature exploitable?

TL;DR

This paper proposes simple device concepts to test if room-temperature thermo-ionic emission can generate exploitable voltage, challenging the Second Law of Thermodynamics with potential macroscopic implications.

Contribution

It introduces a straightforward experimental setup to evaluate room-temperature thermo-ionic emission's ability to produce macroscopic voltage and current.

Findings

Potential to generate measurable voltage from a single thermal source at room temperature

Simpler approach compared to previous methods

Assessment of thermodynamics principles at macroscopic scale

Abstract

In this brief note we describe two devices, a sort of flat and spherical capacitor, with which one should be able to test the possibility of creating a macroscopic voltage, and thus exploitable current, out of a single thermal source at room temperature. The basic idea is trivial and it makes use of a thermo-emitting cathode with work function as low as 0.7eV. The idea is not completely new, but our approach is simpler and neat. When implemented, it should allow to assess if approaches based on thermo-ionic materials at room temperature really violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics macroscopically.