In concept, it would be great to have a light source that draws heats from around it. Certainly in computer cases it would reduce power consumption. However, for general lighting it’s only saving energy if you’re not heating your house.
The heat breaks the band gap and the diode gets cooler. It doesn’t just draw heat from around it - it converts the thermal energy into visible light. So in order for it to cool something, the light has to be diverted for it to not be absorbed and converted into thermal energy again.
Also, if the band gap were small enough, then I think it could produce visible light at room temperature without the need of electrical power. However, because ofsome issue, the light might not be strong enough to see with bare eyes.
Now if only there was a solar cell that was more than 100% efficient.
Unless it’s outside of your house & powering a heater that’s inside of it. Sort of like a reverse air-conditioner.
How much heat would it require though? Because generally when people need heaters, it’s cold outside.
It’s not going to power anything. It’s converting electrical energy and heat energy into light. The exciting part of this is that it’s working against entropy which could potentially offset the dreadfully-inefficient, heat-generating devices that we’re using at the moment. Of course, the light’s going to get converted back to heat when it hits an object but if we can use the light before it gets reabsorbed then that will, at least, be useful.
We already have “reverse air-conditioners”. They’re called electric heaters and they’re 100% efficient because all of the energy that goes in is converted into what we want, heat.
I was saying that this technology could someday be used as a power supply probably at usable temperatures & converting heat into electricity instead of photons & I did link to an article about an existing solar cell that’s 114% which means it most likely could be used for energy generation already.
Electric heaters turn electricity into heat just like you said, but air-conditioners take heat from inside of a room & blow it out. I’m saying if it were converting heat from outside of a house into energy & using said energy to power an in-door heater the process is more reminiscent of an air-conditioner in reverse.