Transport of heat and electricity in p-n semiconductor structures

The paper is devoted to the analysis of thermoelectric cooling phenomena in a p-n semiconductor structure. The formulation of an adequate self-consistent theoretical model describing the effect is presented. The role of the recombination rate as a new source of heat in linear approximation of the electric current was discussed, leading to a reformulation of the heat balance equations. The importance of redistribution of nonequilibrium charge carriers, which has been ignored in most publications on this subject, is also shown. Moreover, it is proved that the thermoelectric cooling in the conventional theory, which does not take into account the influence of the nonequilibrium charge carriers, is not correct. In the present work it is demonstrated that the Peltier effect strongly depends on the recombination rate. In particular, it is shown that the sign of the Peltier effect changes with the value of the recombination rate.