Surface Catalyst Infra Red Laser

Abstract

An energy converter reacts hydrocarbons and air on a catalyst configuration to produce a population inversion. A photovoltaic system may extract the radiating energy, and a laser system may extract a significant fraction of the reaction energy in the form of coherent radiation. The flooding of the catalyst adsorption sites with fuel and the choice of catalyst predisposes the adsorbing oxygen molecules to create mono-atomic oxygen hot-atoms, which deposit the considerable energy of oxygen adsorption directly into a reaction channel of adjacent, adsorbed and simple fuel radicals, thereby producing simple, energetic product molecules, concentrating the energy in one or a few modes, and strongly favoring inverted populations. A solid state method to stimulate precursor chemisorbed specie dissociation accelerates the reaction rates, providing a method to greatly intensify pulsed power output, increase efficiency, and to facilitate nano-scale and micro-scale thermal energy heat rejection processes.

1 . A method for extracting energy by creating hot atoms as a source of energetic free radicals, wherein said hot atoms have an energy of approximately 1 eV on a catalyst surface comprising:
 adsorbing a molecule on a catalyst via a precursor mediated trapping;   flooding a surface of the catalyst with one or more reactant molecules;   generating the hot atoms for creating the energetic free radicals on said catalyst surface; and   extracting energy from the population inversion resulting from the energetic free radicals using a laser.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the adsorbing includes:
 adsorbing an oxygen molecule; and   trapping the oxygen molecule on one of platinum and silver.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , the method further including:
 cooling the catalyst to induce condensation and concentration on the catalyst surface.   
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the flooding includes:
 flooding the catalyst surface with fuel to cause a bias of dissociative chemisorption process toward creation of the hot atom oxygen free radicals, wherein a collision partner of the hot atom oxygen free radicals is the fuel.