Researchers have discovered a method to surpass traditional thermodynamic limits in converting waste heat into electricity.

Harnessing quantum states that avoid thermalization enables energy harvesters to surpass traditional thermodynamic limits ...

THERMODYNAMICS is one of the most successful theories of matter ever constructed. There are no known violations of the theory for the description of macroscopic systems for which it was devised. But ...

Thus, the efficiency of a real heat engine is always less than that of a Carnot heat engine operating between the same ...

A Chinese-US research group claims to have achieved a power conversion efficiency of over 50% in an n-type single-junction solar cell by inhibiting light conversion to heat at extremely low ...

One famous limit of thermodynamics is that heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, must be less efficient than a Carnot heat engine (a heat engine cycle designed by French ...

(Editor’s Note: This story originally ran in November 2008 and has proved a perennial favorite of Power Engineering readers. With the New Year we thought we’d share it again. Click here to see the ...

An American research team developed the new formula by applying to bifacial cells the Shockley-Queisser triangle, which is used to calculate the maximum theoretical efficiency of a monofacial solar ...

Physicists have created a device that has experimentally exceeded the conventional second law of thermodynamics. The device is an information engine, which converts information into work, and it is ...

Economic and other factors have had a large influence on the movement away from coal to other energy sources. One of these influences was the rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) that ...

Imagine a world where your computer doesn’t just work harder but smarter, tapping into the very chaos that surrounds us. It’s not science fiction—it’s the dawn of probabilistic and thermodynamic ...