Recent content by ADesilets

Maybe a differential work function/electron affinity effect. You might be seeing the potential difference between the EDLs of capacitor materials. Thermal ballistic motion of ions at the interface can exchange electrons differentially with each electrode even if no chemical reaction is...

It's fine that the energy levels are low. I've got no expectation off matching a solar panel at noon. My main thought is that the power available indoors is probably better in the IR spectrum than what indoor solar panels are tuned to.

Infrared is ubiquitous and to do with dark current -> real meters have finite resistance, no real meter is a superconductor, if you can measure dark current: there's emf. Since we can measure and quantify 0 bias dark current generation and we can see the measurements certified on manufacturers...

Just wanted to add in a real life example for you, I just finished building a modular and exapandable, 3D-printed electrostatic machine that uses #10-32 and foil tape for all of the electrical interals. It uses 120 mm disks since they are the disks that are used in the "sparkit" DIY wimshurst...

Yeah, the design I'm talking about is quite a lot more powerful than a wimshurst for the number of disks. Because disks are sandwiched between two inductors, you get ~4x the amount of charge per sector compared to a wimshurst machine. Womelsdorf machines are set up with a sandwiched disks, but...

There are a lot of different types, the triboelectric ones like the van der graaffs can be quite powerful, but they are higher maintenance and tend to be somewhat current limmited at hobby scales. Wimshursts and sectorless wimshursts are good options, but the counter-rotation can be a design...