Conditions for observing the thermo-electro-photo cooling effect

The feasibility of a thermo-electro-photo device for simultaneous refrigeration and photoemission is investigated. The refrigeration is a result of phonon absorption by electrons moving up against an energy barrier at one junction and the photoemission occurs because of energy dissipation through electron-hole radiative recombination at the other. The result of the feasibility study shows that the phonon-electron-photon transition may be observed if the thermoelectric coefficient-of-performance at the cold junction and the internal quantum efficiency of light emission at the hot junction are larger than 3 and 0.25, respectively. To facilitate the energy match between the two junctions, a staircase energy band structure is proposed.