High-Performance Thermionic Cooling Devices Based on Tilted-Barrier Semiconductor Heterostructures
Marc Bescond, Kazuhiko Hirakawa
Abstract
Refrigeration at the nanoscale is crucial to overcoming the detrimental self-heating that arises in ultraminiaturized (opto)electronics. To date, most technologies for such cooling have been based on the thermoelectric Peltier effect, the efficiency of which may be limited due to the Joule effect. Therefore, this study considers an approach based on nonequilibrium thermionic emission to reach higher cooling efficiencies. The authors propose a semiconductor heterostructure with a tilted potential barrier and show, based on quantum simulations, that it significantly increases refrigeration performance.
Topics & Concepts
Thermionic emissionHeterojunctionRefrigerationThermoelectric coolingJoule heatingMaterials scienceThermoelectric effectSemiconductorElectronicsEngineering physicsOptoelectronicsJoule (programming language)Semiconductor deviceNon-equilibrium thermodynamicsNanotechnologyPhysicsElectrical engineeringThermodynamicsElectronEngineeringPower (physics)Layer (electronics)Quantum mechanicsComposite materialAdvanced Thermodynamics and Statistical MechanicsThermal Radiation and Cooling TechnologiesOptical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials