Abstract

This article describes some experiments that demonstrated direct energy conversion from an NRC-exempt americium-241 alpha-particle source that produced a measurable potential of about 0.3 volts. The principle is sound, but a large and perhaps impractical quantity of americium-241 would be required for observing any significant electrical output above the noise level. These experiments were very instructive regarding the ionization process, direct energy conversion and low-level current measurements.