« Cooling devices based on non-equilibrium transport in semiconductor heterostructures »
ANR funding: 440 000 €
Partners :
IM2NP UMR 7334 (Marseille) : M. Bescond (coordinator), C. Saadi, N. Cavassilas, F. Michelini, M. Lannoo.
LIMMS IRL 2820 (Tokyo) : K. Hirakawa (scientific responsible), C. Salhani, X. Zhu.
LPENS UMR 8023 (Paris) : R. Ferreira (scientific responsible), G. Bastard et F. Carosella.
IPVF UMR 9006 (Saclay) : D. Suchet (scientific responsible) et J.-F. Guillemoles.
GELATO aims at designing very high efficiency thermionic cooling nano devices. It is motivated by the urgent technological need to control Joule effect dissipation in nanoelectronics in a context of energy storage crisis. We will focus on multi-barrier semiconductor heterostructures, for which consortium members have recently demonstrated the relevance for nanoscale cooling. Two scientific tasks will be addressed. The first one will focus on the study of asymmetric double-barrier heterostructures, in order to achieve the highest cooling. The second task will be dedicated to the design of more sophisticated cooling devices based on opto-thermo-ionic pumping and metamaterials. This work should pave the way for a new era of research in thermoelectricity and will lead to the fabrication of nano devices offering unprecedented cooling efficiency.