Efficiency of Brownian motors in terms of entropy production rate

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Published 1 October 2008 Europhysics Letters Association
, , Citation Min Qian et al 2008 EPL 84 10014 DOI 10.1209/0295-5075/84/10014

0295-5075/84/1/10014

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to the investigation of the efficiency of Brownian motors in the framework of nonequilibrium theory. We derive an explicit expression of the entropy production rate (EPR) for a chemically driven Brownian motor and use this to develop an expression for motor efficiency in terms of the EPR. Our result is consistent with earlier derivations but is more general and physically transparent and thus applicable to a wider range of biological motors.

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