Related papers: Optimizing the performance of thermionic devices u…
A thermal current, generated by a temperature gradient between two reservoirs coupled to a carefully designed photonic or (micro-) electromechanical circuit, might induce non-conservative forces that impulse a mechanical degree of freedom…
We study linear response and nonequilibrium steady-state thermoelectric transport through a single-level quantum dot tunnel coupled to two reservoirs held at different temperatures as well as chemical potentials. A fermion occupying the dot…
Thermionics and thermophotovoltaics are solid-state technologies that convert high-temperature heat into electricity by utilizing fundamental particles, electrons in thermionics and photons in thermophotovoltaics, as energy carriers. Both…
The wave-like nature of electrons leads to the existence of upper bounds on the thermoelectric response of nanostructured devices [R. S. Whitney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130601 (2014); Phys. Rev. B 91, 115425 (2015)]. This fundamental result,…
Brownian heat engines use local temperature gradients in asymmetric potentials to move particles against an external force. The energy efficiency of such machines is generally limited by irreversible heat flow carried by particles that make…
Solid-state heat-to-electrical power converters are thermodynamic engines that use fundamental particles, such as electrons or photons, as working fluids. Virtually all commercially available devices are thermoelectric generators, in which…
Passive filters allowing the exchange of particles in a narrow band of energy are currently used in micro-refrigerators and energy transducers. In this letter, we analyze their thermal properties using linear irreversible thermodynamics and…
It is shown that equations for electrical current in solid-state thermionic and thermoelectric devices converge for devices with a width equal to the mean free path of electrons, yielding a common expression for intensive electronic…
In this letter, we consider a large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system where the receiver should harvest energy from the transmitter by wireless power transfer to support its wireless information transmission. The energy…
Over the past years, thermionic energy conversion (TEC) with a reduced inter-electrode vacuum gap has been studied as an effective way to mitigate a large potential barrier due to space charge accumulation. However, existing theoretical…
We present a systematic optimization of nighttime thermoelectric power generation system utilizing radiative cooling. We show that an electrical power density over 2 W/m2, two orders of magnitude higher than the previously reported…
A nanostructured thermoelectric device is designed by connecting a double-barrier resonant tunneling heterostructure to two electron reservoirs. Based on Landauers equation and Fermi-Dirac statistics, the exact solution of the heat flow is…
We consider two modifications of a recently proposed three-terminal quantum dot heat engine. First, we investigate the necessity of the thermalization assumption, namely that electrons are always thermalized by inelastic processes when…
This work investigates an alternative to thermophotovoltaics for harvesting thermal and optical energy via photon coupling and thermionic energy conversion. In this device, a heat source is radiatively coupled to a thermionic electron…
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…
Investigating in detail the physics of energy filtering through a single planar energy barrier in nanostructured thermoelectric generators, we reinforce the non-trivial result that the anticipated enhancement in generated power at a given…
Improvement of thermoelectric systems in terms of performance and range of applications relies on progress in materials science and optimization of device operation. In this chapter, we focuse on optimization by taking into account the…
We introduce a scheme that exploits laser cooling and phonon-mediated spin-spin interactions in crystals of trapped atomic ions to explore the transport of energy through a quantum magnet. We show how to implement an effective transport…
Optimization analyses of thermoelectric generators operation is of importance both for practical applications and theoretical considerations. Depending on the desired goal, two different strategies are possible to achieve high performance:…
Thermoelectric devices convert temperature gradients into electrical power and vice versa, thus enabling energy scavenging from waste heat, sensing and cooling. Yet, many of these attractive applications are hindered by the limited…