Electrical Theory of Thermodynamics and Particle Scale Heat Engines

Abstract

Ultimately at single particle scales, the principal forces of interactio n are electric and magnetic, and all heat is essentially kinetic energy, hence direct treatment of thermodynamic processes in terms of these forces would be more insightful and appropriate at these scales. The main result is the novel possibility of virtually eliminating the principal cause of inefficiency in current heat engines by raising the efficiency of the Carnot cycle itself to almost unity. The reason this should be possible is that the nascent particle energies in chemical reactions and photovoltaics are equivalent to excess of 10,000 K, and are even higher by seven orders of magnitude in nuclear fission, but it would require directly converting the nascent energie s before their dissipation into bulk media. I show that a magnetic or dielectric engine cycle, which in fact involves electromagnetic field interactions with the medium, is indeed capable of such conversion as it can compete against thermal diffusion, instead of waiting for local thermal equilibrium. The resulting scheme also closely relates to regenerative braking. As a necessary foundation for treating the particle scale conversion, general eq uivalent circuits of heat engines and the circuit equations of state are developed and are shown to even provide analytic refinement over traditional heat engine theory, such as an opportunity for very closely approaching the ideal cycle using phase space velocity control. The difficulties to be addressed for particle scale conversion and vir tually unity efficiency are discussed using regenerative hot carrier energy recovery, which could enable nondissipating semiconductor logic at over 100 GHz speeds, as a near-term realizable example.