Near-Field Electroluminescent Refrigeration Device for Simultaneous High Cooling Power and High Coefficient of Performance

Open Access
- Author:
- Liu, Chun Sen
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Linxiao Zhu, Thesis Supervisor
Daniel Humberto Cortes Correales, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Electroluminescent cooling
Solid state cooling
Near-field radiative heat transfer - Abstract:
- Over the past decades, there has been an extreme amount of development in the electronics industry. One challenge to further increasing the computational power is to cope with the excessive amount of heat generated in the computing process. To continue with increasing computational power and ensuring stability and safety of computing facilities, advanced cooling strategy is in high demand. Currently, the most common mode of heat transfer for electronics involve convection and conduction. On the other hand, for many emerging applications such as personalized thermal management, cooling of sensors, residential, industrial, and space cooling, efficient, solid-state cooler will be desirable. The latest development in electroluminescent cooling involves using forward-biased light emitting diodes (LEDs) to achieve either high cooling power using near-field enhanced energy transfer or high coefficient of performance by using photon recycling in the far field. However, it is unclear if high cooling power and high coefficient of performance can be achieved in a same device. In this thesis, we theoretically demonstrate solid-state electroluminescent cooling with both high cooling power and high coefficient of performance. The total heat transfer between two parallel plates separated by a nanoscale or microscale gap is calculated. Both high cooling power and high coefficient of performance can be achieved using select films on the parallel plate structure with a supplied voltage. The performance of the cooling device is shown through a power-voltage relation. A setup with no film, and two with different films is tested. The device consisting of a GaAs LED and GaAs photodiode (PD) with a diamond film exhibits the highest cooling power and coefficient of performance since it enhances luminescent energy transfer, while suppressing sub-bandgap parasitic radiative heat transfer.