Related papers: A thermodynamic cycle for the solar cell
Fuel cells, batteries, thermochemical and other energy conversion devices involve the transport of a number of (electro-)chemical species through distinct materials so that they can meet and react at specified multi-material interfaces.…
We present a pipeline to study the device performance of organic solar cells in silico. We introduce a mathematical model that includes the dynamics of excitons as well as their dissociation at bulk heterojunctions within the nanomorphology…
Heat engines that convert thermal energy into work are a cornerstone of classical thermodynamics and remain an active area of contemporary research. Notable examples include microscopic heat engines, trade-off relations between power and…
Several studies have combined heat and gravitational energy exchanges to create novel heat engines. A common theoretical framework is developed here to describe thermogravitational cycles which have the same efficiencies as the Carnot,…
Photovoltaics has two main processes: Optical absorption and power conversion. In photosynthesis, the two equivalent processes are optical absorption and chemical conversion. Whereas in the latter, the two processes are carried out by…
This activity has been developed as a resource for the "EU Space Awareness" educational programme. As part of the suite "Our Fragile Planet" together with the "Climate Box" it addresses aspects of weather phenomena, the Earth's climate and…
We introduce a cyclic quantum battery model, based on an interacting bipartite system, weakly coupled to a thermal bath. The working cycle of the battery consists of four strokes: system thermalization, disconnection of subsystems,…
We demonstrate a thermodynamic engine whose working substance is a sine-Gordon soliton in a heterogeneous current-driven Josephson junction. We show that solitons can act as thermodynamic working substances whose internal spectral structure…
Hot carrier solar cell is proposed where charge carriers are cooled adiabatically in the charge transport layers adjoining the absorber. The device resembles an ideal thermoelectric converter where thermopower, and therefore also carrier…
Variability of the energy output throughout the day/night poses a major hurdle to the widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems. An integrated photovoltaic (PV) and electrochemical (EC)-storage system offers a solution, but the…
We present a self-contained engine, which is made of one or more two-level systems, each of which is coupled to a single bath, as well as to a common load composed of a particle on a tilted lattice. We show that the energy and the entropy…
The hotness of the sun and the coldness of the outer space are inexhaustible thermodynamic resources for human beings. From a thermodynamic point of view, any energy conversion systems that receive energy from the sun and/or dissipate…
In conventional solar cells, photogenerated carriers lose part of their energy before they can be extracted to make electricity. The aim of hot-carrier solar cells is to extract the carriers before this energy loss, thereby turning more…
The p-type amorphous/ n-type crystalline silicon (P+ a-Si/N+ c-Si) heterojunction was simulated for developing the solar cells with high conversion efficiency and low cost. The characteristic of such cells with different work function of…
The recently proposed strategy for studying the equilibrium thermodynamics of the glass phase using a molecular liquid is reviewed and tested in details on the solvable case of the $p$-spin model. We derive the general phase diagram, and…
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…
The built-in potential of p-n junctions plays a pivotal role in charge separation, a fundamental process underlying the photovoltaic effect.However, conventional classical theories of photovoltaic behavior in p-n junctions often neglect its…
We investigate the quantum thermodynamics of two quantum systems, a two-level system and a four-level quantum photocell, each driven by photon pulses as a quantum heat engine. We set these systems to be in thermal contact only with a cold…
A system consisting of two slabs with different temperatures can exhibit a non-equilibrium lateral Casimir force on either one of the slabs when Lorentz reciprocity is broken in at least one of the slabs. This system constitutes a photonic…
In this paper we study thermo-electric transport in interacting two-dimensional Dirac-type systems using a phenomenological Boltzmann approach. We consider a setup that can accommodate electrons, holes, and collective modes. In the first…