ERC Starting Grant · 2021
Molecular Quantum Heat Engines
Heat engines are an integral part of our daily lives. They power cars or produce electricity by converting heat into work. Increasing their efficiency is very difficult and only marginal improvements have been achieved over the last decades. Thus, to reach the ambitious climate goals, it is necessary to go beyond conventional technologies. Atom-sized systems where quantum mechanical effects come into play could enable this: theory predicts that their efficiency can be boosted beyond the classical limits imposed by thermodynamics. However, so far, this has not been tested in practice due to a lack of suitable model systems. I propose to build a molecular heat engine of only a few atoms in…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.