[19a-Z23-1~6] 13.6 Nanostructures, quantum phenomena, and nano quantum devices

▲ [19a-Z23-4] Highly efficient thermionic cooling semiconductor device: the Quantum Cascade Cooler

〇Marc Bescond¹, Kazuhiko Hirakawa^1,2 (1.LIMMS-CNRS, The University of Tokyo, 2.IIS-INQIE-The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:Thermionic cooling, Quantum cascade cooler, Quantum transport simulations

The understanding and control of cooling properties at the nanoscale represent major scientific and industrial issues. In this work, we propose a cooling device which consists of sequentially stacked thermionic emission quantum well (QW) heterostructures. Thanks to appropriate band engineering, it is possible to progressively increase the energy level in each GaAs QW. In such configuration, an electron absorbing a phonon in the first period can tunnel into the next period of the structure, where another phonon can be absorbed. This process is similar the one occurring in quantum cascade laser between electron and photon emission, which leads us to identify this structure as “quantum cascade cooler” (QCC). Quantum transport simulations show that the present QCC, based on sequential “tunneling/thermionic emission” processes, is very promising for nano-scale refrigeration.