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This is a review of the theory of quantum thermodynamic demons; these arequantum systems that look like they violate the laws of thermodynamics, inanalogy with Maxwell's demon. It concentrates on autonomous demons that can bemade using nanoelectronics. Here ``autonomous'' means that the demon operateswithout any external measurement or driving, making it possible to model theirentire thermodynamic behaviour using Schr\"odinger's equation. My main aim isto review why cracks in the laws of thermodynamics, sometimes glimpsed in suchsystems, have turned out to be illusory.  For this, I work by example, introducing the methods of quantumthermodynamics via an old thought experiment that appears to break the secondlaw. This thought experiment is usually known as Smoluchowski's trapdoor,although it was first proposed by Maxwell. Smoluchowski showed that thetrapdoor's thermal motion complicates its dynamics, but I argue that he did notshow that it must obey the second law. This question is now of practicalrelevance, because a nanoelectronic version of the trapdoor can be made withquantum dots. The methods presented here show that such a quantum trapdoorobeys the laws of thermodynamics.  This reviews then addresses other types of autonomous demon thatsuperficially appear to break the laws of thermodynamics, but which do not.These include an experimental demonstration of a Maxwell demon, and a kind ofdemon that exploit non-equilibrium resources (the N-demon). It discusses a wayof classifying different kinds of autonomous demon. It concludes by brieflyreviewing how fluctuations affect nanoelectronics, and how their role instochastic thermodynamics changes our view of entropy.

Illusory cracks in the second law of thermodynamics in quantum nanoelectronics