Inverse Nottingham effect cooling in semiconductors

The inverse Nottingham effect is a cooling scheme involving vacuum emission from the conduction band of p-type semiconductors designed in such a way t hat electrons are pulled off from above the Fermi level into the vacuum via either field emission or via resonant tunneling into the vacuum. The reple nishment from the valence band for the restoration of thermal equilibrium r esults in cooling. Resonant tunneling promotes efficient tunneling into the vacuum with energy selection, thereby preventing tunneling to take place b elow the Fermi level and thus preventing heating. Our numerical model gives a conservative estimate of the cooling current of 360 W/cm(2) at 300 K for Si with even higher values for GaAs and GaN. (C) 1999 The Electrochemical Society. S1099-0062(99)07-039-X. All rights reserved.