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We theoretically show how structural modifications and controlling quantum coherency can enhance linear and nonlinear thermoelectric performance in graphene nanostructure heat engines. Although graphene has emerged as a promising material…
Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasi-static limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. In this Letter, we present a minimal heat engine model that can…
I propose a design strategy to enhance the performance of heat engine via absorption of thermal energy from the channel region. The absorption of thermal energy can be actuated by inelastic processes and may be accomplished by an energy…
The performance of thermoelectric energy harvesters can be improved by nanostructures that exploit inelastic transport processes. One prototype is the three-terminal hopping thermoelectric device where electron hopping between quantum-dots…
With the emergence of new photonic and plasmonic materials with optimized properties as well as advanced nanofabrication techniques, nanophotonic devices are now capable of providing solutions to global challenges in energy conversion,…
Thermoelectric materials open a way to harness dissipated energy and make electronic devices less energy-demanding. Heat-to-electricity conversion requires materials with a strongly suppressed thermal conductivity but still high electronic…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
Nanoscale conductors are interesting for thermoelectrics because of their particular spectral features connecting separated heat and particle currents. Multiterminal devices in the quantum regime benefit from phase-coherent phenomena, which…
Recent advances in experimental control of colloidal systems have spurred a revolution in the production of mesoscale thermodynamic devices. Functional "textbook" engines, such as the Stirling and Carnot cycles, have been produced in…
Collective effects have attracted remarkable recent interest, not only for their presence in several systems in nature but also for the possibility of being used for the construction of efficient engine setups. Notwithstanding, little is…
Modern technologies could soon make it possible to investigate the operation cycles of quantum heat engines by counting the photons that are emitted and absorbed by their working systems. Using the quantum jump approach to open-system…
Thermoelectric devices are heat engines, which operate as generators or refrigerators using the conduction electrons as a working fluid. The thermoelectric heat-to-work conversion efficiency has always been typically quite low, but much…
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
Optimizing the performance of thermal machines is an essential task of thermodynamics. We here consider the optimization of information engines that convert information about the state of a system into work. We concretely introduce a…
A quantum thermal machine is an open quantum system that enables the conversion between heat and work at the micro or nano-scale. Optimally controlling such out-of-equilibrium systems is a crucial yet challenging task with applications to…
We study a minimal quantum Otto heat engine, where the working medium consists of an interacting few-body system in a harmonic trap. This allows us to consider the interaction strength as an additional tunable parameter during the work…
This research employs the Kraus representation and Sz.-Nagy dilation theorem to model a three-level quantum heat on quantum circuits, investigating its dynamic evolution and thermodynamic performance. The feasibility of the dynamic model is…
Sadi Carnot's theorem regarding the maximum efficiency of heat engines is considered to be of fundamental importance in thermodynamics. This theorem famously states that the maximum efficiency depends only on the temperature of the heat…
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…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…