Abstract
Heat engines provide most of our mechanical power and are essential for transportation on the macroscopic scale. However, although significant progress has been made in the miniaturization of electrostatic engines, it has proved difficult to reduce the size of liquid- or gas-driven heat engines below 107 μm3. Here we demonstrate that a crystalline silicon structure operates as a cyclic piezoresistive heat engine when it is driven by a sufficiently high d.c. current. A 0.34 μm3 engine beam draws heat from the d.c. current using the piezoresistive effect and converts it into mechanical work by expansion and contraction at different temperatures. This mechanical power drives a silicon resonator of 1.1×103 μm3 into sustained oscillation. Even below the oscillation threshold the engine beam continues to amplify the resonator’s Brownian motion. When its thermodynamic cycle is inverted, the structure is shown to reduce these thermal fluctuations, therefore operating as a refrigerator.
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Acknowledgements
We thank J. J. M. Ruigrok, C. S. Vaucher, K. Reimann, R. Woltjer and E. P. A. M. Bakkers for discussions and suggestions and thank J. v. Wingerden for his assistance with the scanning electron microscope measurements.
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K.L.P., P.G.S., J.T.M.v.B. and M.J.G. invented and designed the device. P.G.S., K.L.P., M.J.G. and C.v.d.A. carried out the experiments. P.G.S. developed the theory, analysed the experiments and wrote the Article. J.T.M.v.B., G.E.J.K. and G.J.A.M.B. developed the process technology and manufactured the device.
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Steeneken, P., Le Phan, K., Goossens, M. et al. Piezoresistive heat engine and refrigerator. Nature Phys 7, 354–359 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1871
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1871
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