Brownian thermal control device
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THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B
Regular Article
Brownian thermal control device Hong Zhao and Linru Nie a Faculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, P.R. China
Received 8 July 2020 / Received in final form 7 September 2020 / Accepted 17 September 2020 Published online 9 November 2020 c EDP Sciences / Societ`
a Italiana di Fisica / Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature, 2020 Abstract. Here, we design a Brownian thermal control device with microscale, which consists of two compartments modeled by two spatially periodic potentials, respectively. Through calculating its thermal current, it is found that the device can play roles of both thermal diode and thermal on–off, depending on its symmetry and amplitudes and spatial frequencies of the periodic potentials. In the case of optimal amplitudes and spatial frequencies, a negative differential thermal resistance effect also appears in the system, by means of which a Brownian thermal transistor can be developed. These findings have an important significance for understanding operating mechanisms through which some nano-scale machines and organisms usually work under environments of constant temperatures.
1 Introduction Utilizing thermal energy has been a challenge for existence and continuable development of mankind [1]. Since the Smoluchowski and Feynmans Gedanken experiment about converting thermal energy into useful work [2], much attention has been paid to intensive study of Brownian motor (BM) [3–7] due to its wide application to bioengineering [8] and nanotechnology [9,10] such as ion pump Na–K–ATPase [11], motor proteins [12–14], and nanomachine [15–20], etc. One of the most important parameters measuring operating performance of the BM is its current. One necessary gradient for the BM to form directional motion is symmetry breaking. Of course, one always hopes to control operating of the BM via external periodic force, and makes it work as expected. This demands intensive study of effect of the external periodic force on the BM’s current [21–23]. In the action of the time-dependent periodic forces, particles in periodic potentials can behave abnormal transport behaviors. For example, it is the periodic forces that induce multiple current reversal and absolute negative mobility in the systems with space-time inseparable periodic potentials [24,25]. Another effective means of using thermal energy is the design of thermal devices for controlling thermal current. With the progress of nanotechnology, one has devoted to studying thermal conduction in chains of nonlinear lattices. In previous research work about it, nonequilibrium sources and symmetry breaking have been considered as two necessary conditions for emergence of thermal current [26–32]. The authors in reference [33] a
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investigated theoretically heat conduction of symmetric Frenkel–Kontorova (FK) lattices, and found that the coupling displacement between two segments of the FK lattices can induce thermal current reversal many
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