Cascade-enhanced transport efficiency of biochemical systems.

Recent developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, known as thermodynamic uncertainty relations, limit the system's accuracy by the amount of free-energy consumption. A transport efficiency, which can be used to characterize the capacity to control the fluctuation by means of energy cost, is a direct result of the thermodynamic uncertainty relation. According to our previous research, biochemical systems consume much lower energy cost by noise-induced oscillations to keep almost equal efficiency to maintain precise processes than that by normal oscillations.

Improving estimation of entropy production rate for run-and-tumble particle systems by high-order thermodynamic uncertainty relation.

Entropy production plays an important role in the regulation and stability of active matter systems, and its rate quantifies the nonequilibrium nature of these systems. However, entropy production is hard to experimentally estimate even in some simple active systems like molecular motors or bacteria, which may be modeled by the run-and-tumble particle (RTP), a representative model in the study of active matters. Here we resolve this problem for an asymmetric RTP in one dimension, first constructing a finite-time thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) for a RTP, which works well in the short observation time regime for entropy production estimation.

Fast Functionalization with High Performance in the Autonomous Information Engine.

Mandal and Jarzynski have proposed a fully autonomous information heat engine, consisting of a demon, a mass, and a memory register interacting with a thermal reservoir. This device converts thermal energy into mechanical work by writing information to a memory register or, conversely, erasing information by consuming mechanical work. Here, we derive a speed limit inequality between the relaxation time of state transformation and the distance between the initial and final distributions, where the combination of the dynamical activity and entropy production plays an important role.

High-Curvature Transition-Metal Chalcogenide Nanostructures with a Pronounced Proximity Effect Enable Fast and Selective CO Electroreduction.

A considerable challenge in the conversion of carbon dioxide into useful fuels comes from the activation of CO to CO or other intermediates, which often requires precious-metal catalysts, high overpotentials, and/or electrolyte additives (e.g., ionic liquids).