Better Energy Harvesting with ‘Law-Breaking' Device

A new device developed in the lab of Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, breaks that normally tight relationship between the absorbed and emitted efficiencies of an object. The invention may also have important implications for sustainable energy harvesting systems and the development of certain kinds of camouflage. "Kirchhoff's law has been upheld for more than 150 years, and while theoretical proposals for its violation have been advanced before, this is the first experimental proof that this law can be broken," says Atwater. [Caltech story]