Related papers: A one dimensional hard-point gas as a thermoelectr…
The quest for good thermoelectric materials and/or high-efficiency thermoelectric devices is of primary importance from theoretical and practical points of view. Low-dimensional structures with quantum dots or molecules are promising…
Accurate measurement of efficiency for thermoelectric generator (TEG) is of great importance for materials research and development. Approximately all the parameters of a material are temperature dependent, so we can't directly apply the…
We report the experimental realization of a single-atom heat engine. An ion is confined in a linear Paul trap with tapered geometry and driven thermally by coupling it alternately to hot and cold reservoirs. The output power of the engine…
We study the efficiency of holographic heat engines in the context of extended black hole thermodynamics, where the cosmological constant becomes a dynamical variable. By taking the working substance as a static black hole (i.e. a…
Reduced dimensionality has long been regarded as an important strategy for increasing thermoelectric performance, for example in superlattices and other engineered structures. Here we point out and illustrate by examples that three…
Optimisation of heat engines at the micro-scale has applications in biological and artificial nano-technology, and stimulates theoretical research in non-equilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider non-interacting overdamped particles…
On the assumption that experimentally validated tabulated thermodynamic properties of saturated fluids published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are accurate, a theoretical thermodynamic cycle can be demonstrated that…
It was recently suggested that molecular junctions would be excellent elements for efficient and high-power thermoelectric energy conversion devices. However, experimental measurements of thermoelectric conversion in molecular junctions…
Different economical configurations, due for instance to the relative cost of the fuel it consumes, can push a heat engine into operating whether at maximum efficiency or at maximum power produced. Any relevant design of such system hence…
We predict an enormous order-dependent quantum enhancement of thermoelectric effects in the vicinity of a higher-order `supernode' in the transmission spectrum of a nanoscale junction. Single-molecule junctions based on 3,3'-biphenyl and…
Heat engines are fundamental physical objects to develop nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The thermodynamic performance of the heat engine is determined by the choice of cycle and time-dependence of parameters. Here, we propose a systematic…
Living systems efficiently use chemical fuel to do work, process information, and assemble patterns despite thermal noise. Whether high efficiency arises from general principles or specific fine-tuning is unknown. Here, applying a recent…
We identify the operational conditions for maximum power of a nanothermoelectric engine consisting of a single quantum level embedded between two leads at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The corresponding thermodynamic…
We study the thermoelectric properties and heat-to-work conversion performance of an interacting, multi-level quantum dot (QD) weakly coupled to electronic reservoirs. We focus on the sequential tunneling regime. The dynamics of the charge…
We develop a geometric framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by slow periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Covering both the classical and the quantum…
Efficient thermoelectric materials are highly desirable, and the quest for finding them has intensified as they could be promising alternatives to fossil energy sources. Here we present a general first-principles approach to predict, in…
In this Letter, we show thermoelectric conversion efficiency is \emph{exactly} determined by \emph{three} independent material parameters $Z_{\rm gen}$, $\tau$, and $\beta$. Each parameter is a figure of merit hence improving $\tau$ or…
Established heat engines in quantum regime can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, in the non-relativistic case, we can model the heat engine using infinite potential well as a working substance to…
A new thermoelectric effect mechanism inspired by an autonomous Maxwell's demon [P. Strasberg, G. Schaller, T. Brandes, and M. Esposito, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 040601 (2013)] is proposed. In contrast to the former work where a model for…
We consider a quantum engine driven by repeated weak interactions with a heat bath of identical three-level atoms. This model was first introduced by Scully et al. [Science, 2003], who showed that coherence between the energy-degenerate…