Abstract
A three-terminal heat engine based on resonant-tunneling multi-level quantum dots is proposed. With the help of Landauer formula, the general expressions for the charge and heat currents, the power output and efficiency are derived. In the linear response regime an explicit analytic expressions for the charge and heat currents, the maximum power output and the corresponding efficiency is presented. Next, the performance characteristic and optimal performance of the heat engine is investigated in the nonlinear response regime by numerical calculation. Finally, the influence of the main parameters, including the asymmetry factor, the energy-level spacing, the energy difference, the number of discrete energy levels, the bias voltage, and the temperature difference on the optimal performance of the heat engine is analyzed in detail. By choosing appropriate parameters one can obtain the maximum power output and the corresponding efficiency at maximum output power.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 11875034), People’s Republic of China.
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Liu, X., Gao, J. & He, J. A three-terminal heat engine based on resonant-tunneling multi-level quantum dots. Eur. Phys. J. B 96, 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00470-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00470-2