If I had a strong source of radio-frequency photons, can these be converted to electricity like a solar panel does for light?
If I had a strong source of radio-frequency photons, can these be converted to electricity like a solar panel does for light?
You mean like…. Inductive power transmission? Like every modern cell phone uses?
It’s been around for quite a while, actually, and chances are solid, you use it every day without realizing it.
Nikola Tesla worked on it because he wanted to create a sort of electromagnetic shield that would prevent any sort of attack. The problem with the shield was it would- theoretically-prevent all the -modern attacks. (It sort of worked. The problem was it required horrible amounts of power, just for a single tower, would require a massive power grid and still had the problem of frying any bit of metal. Details.)
The inductive power transmission actually worked quite well, besides the efficiency involved in the inverse square law.
Which, brings us to the new-modern era, with inductive charging for devices- electric toothbrushes were the first since it let you seal the toothbrush and still charge it- then we see it in RFID type things
the RF powers a chip that modulates the carrier wave and rebroadcasts something different. This is used for access control, mostly, but it was basically the same thing as The Thing- a Soviet era bug in the US’s embassy in Moscow. Located in the seal they gifted. This is also used when you “tap” credit or debit cards.
We also see it while charging phones, or apple watches or anything like that.
The reason it’s all relatively low-power is that as you increase in power, it becomes increasingly inefficient. Horribly so.