Enhanced performance of joint cooling and energy production

TL;DR

This paper investigates three-terminal devices combining electronic and thermal components, revealing that exploiting thermal power for cooling and power generation can outperform traditional cooling methods in efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces and analyzes two procedures for joint cooling and energy production, showing that thermal power exploitation can enhance device performance.

Findings

Procedure (b) achieves higher coefficient of performance than (a)

Thermal power utilization improves cooling and energy output

Surprising enhancement in efficiency observed

Abstract

The efficiencies/coefficients of performance of three-terminal devices, comprising two electronic terminals and a thermal one (e.g., a boson bath) are discussed. In particular, two procedures are analyzed. (a) One of the electronic terminals is cooled by investing thermal power (from the thermal bath) and electric power (from voltage applied across the electronic junction); (b) The invested thermal power from the boson bath is exploited to cool one electronic terminal and to produce electric power. Rather surprisingly, the coefficient of performance of (b) can be enhanced as compared to that of (a).