The mission
The principal investigator and his colleagues at Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), University of Tokyo, are working on novel solid-state cooling devices based on the semiconductor quantum heterostructures. In the modern electronics, energy-saving and thermal-management technologies are becoming extremely important. Indeed, electrical fields applied in nano-electronics generate a strong self-heating leading to a significant reduction in the lifetime of devices. On the other hand, the refrigeration of such nano-devices is extremely power consuming. By directly targeting the hot spots of the chips, local coolers can provide the key to an efficient in situ heat management. We are interested in realizing novel solid-state cooling devices based on the concept of “thermionic/evaporative cooling” that can efficiently refrigerates both electron and lattice. In “thermionic/evaporative cooling”, we use resonant tunneling and subsequent thermionic emission to remove energy from the quantum well layer. We have recently demonstrated that such a structure can provide a remarkable electron cooling by as much as 50 K. The aim of this project is to further improve electron cooling and to demonstrate the lattice refrigeration as well.