Eur. Phys. J. B (2018) 91: 102
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2018-80632-9

Regular Article

Thermodynamic reversible transformations in micro-electro-mechanical systems^★

¹ NiPS Laboratory, Dipartimento di Fisica e Geologia, Università degli Studi di Perugia, 06123 Perugia, PG, Italy
² ICMAB-CSIC, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

^a e-mail: igor.neri@nipslab.org

Received: 6 November 2017
Received in final form: 1 March 2018
Published online: 6 June 2018

Abstract

In this work we present accurate measurements of heat exchanged between a micro-electro-mechanical-system and a thermal bath. In particular we focus our attention in reversible transformations with the aim to arbitrarily lower the heat exchanged with the surrounding environment. As expected the limit of zero energy can only be reached in the quasi static regime, achieved approaching infinity slow transformations. Splitting the cycle used to achieve the reversible transformation we are able to directly measure the heat exchanged with the thermal bath for any variation of entropy in the system. In particular we are able to measure both positive and negative heat exchanged for protocols that reduce and increase the entropy respectively.