Geometric rectification for nanoscale vibrational energy harvesting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum-mechanical mechanism for nanoscale vibrational energy harvesting that employs geometric rectification, avoiding classical methods and potentially enhancing efficiency through quantum effects.

Contribution

It proposes a novel quantum-based geometric rectification method for nanoscale energy harvesting, analyzing its theoretical performance and potential advantages over classical approaches.

Findings

Maximized pumped charge under specific initial conditions.

Analyzed steady-state voltage with capacitor coupling.

Quantum effects can enhance device performance.

Abstract

In this work, we present a mechanism that, based on quantum-mechanical principles, allows one to recover kinetic energy at the nanoscale. Our premise is that very small mechanical excitations, such as those arising from sound waves propagating through a nanoscale system or similar phenomena, can be quite generally converted into useful electrical work by applying the same principles behind conventional adiabatic quantum pumping. The proposal is potentially useful for nanoscale vibrational energy harvesting where it can have several advantages. The most important one is that it avoids the use of classical rectification mechanisms as it is based on what we call geometric rectification. We show that this geometric rectification results from applying appropriate but quite general initial conditions to damped harmonic systems coupled to electronic reservoirs. We analyze an analytically solvable example consisting of a wire suspended over permanent charges where we find the condition for maximizing the pumped charge. We also studied the effects of coupling the system to a capacitor including the effect of current-induced forces and analyzing the steady-state voltage of operation. Finally, we show how quantum effects can be used to boost the performance of the proposed device.