[NewCandle] Cold Electricty

[Keith Nagel]

Hey Nick,

So it's probably better to look at the LED's as lossy
capacitors rather than rectifiers as such, unless we
are considering DC or LF AC.

As far as the stars were concerned, it sounds like current
is crowding at those points creating a bright patch. You
might try heating or cooling the whole LED to see if you
can increase or alter the wandering effect.

BTW Jones, when Ron says he's using "only a ground connection",
what does that mean? Does it mean he's tying on to a pipe
or earthed connection, or the ground of the function generator?

K.

-----Original Message-----
From: newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com
[mailto:newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com]On Behalf Of Nick Reiter
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 11:37 AM
To: New energy for the new world.
Subject: Re: [NewCandle] Cold Electricty


Hi guys,

Well, generally I used either a pair of fast diodes or
a bridge of fast diodes to rectify "it" and light up
LEDs. In the bridge configuration, I had one "AC"
connection going to the non-inductive antenna dujour,
and the other "AC" point to ground.  The rectified
connections had a modest value cap (like 1mfd) across
them for filtering.  In poorer performing circuits, I
would have to use a switch to "flash" the LED from the
charged cap. With bigger antennas, or picking up
strong e-fields by proximity, you could get one or
even two LEDs to light dimly in a "CW" mode;)

I tried many "pick-up diodes" for the pair or bridge. 
Silicon, germanium, even selenium!  Empirically, I
found that the faster the better.  Eventually settled
on little 1N914 Si switching diodes, they were fast
enough.  Beyond them, it was diminished return.  LEDs
themselves - of whatever sort - were lousy rectifiers
for RF - they are simply too slow and have too high
internal capacitance, I think.

For the unipolar antenna pickup concept, as I had
played with it, old fashioned red GaAs LEDs had the
lowest voltage drop, and were thus easiest to light
up, singly or multiple.

Now I will mention this also.  GaN quantum well LEDs
(Nichia, mainly) had some curious properties.  When
you would get one glowing moderately dim, and look at
it under a loupe or magnifier, they would develop
strange little bright spots on the mesa that would
wander about over days of time.  never figured out
what the deuce that was all about, though Sam Faile
swore that LEDs that had the "stars" as he called them
were better at lighting up from ground or antenna
pickups.  Not all of them would develop said "stars". 
It was mainly green and blue GaN quantum well devices.

N

--- Keith Nagel <NewCandleAdmin at ipdiscover.com> wrote:

> Hi Nick,
> 
> The LED's specified by Ron are 5000mcd 20ma white.
> That's
> pretty sensitive for cheap commercial units; the
> same
> manufacturer makes a 10000mcd unit but I didn't find
> a source for it ( although my looking consisted of
> only
> a minimal google search ). 
> 
> For me, the most intriguing aspect of the experiment
> is
> using LED's as RF sensors. I couldn't find any
> information
> about two aspects that would be critical for this
> application.
> Junction capacity, and rectification speed. 
> 
> On the other hand, the circuits I have seen so far
> from
> Jones all show a pair of signal diodes along with
> the LED's,
> so it's quite possible that Ron found the raw LED's
> to
> be insufficient as high speed diodes to rectify the
> AC.
> 
> Can you offer any advice about using LED's in this
> fashion,
> as RF rectifiers?
> 
> K.
> 


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