Electronic thermal transport and thermionic cooling in semiconductor multi-quantum-well structures Original Research Article

Recently, it has been proposed that semiconductor or metal-semiconductor multilayer systems can be used as energy generator or cooling devices based on the principles of thermionic emission. Such thermionic cooling devices will have much higher figures of merit than thermoelectric devices. Multilayer thermionic structures have advantages of reduced phonon transport and thus increased thermal efficiency. In this work we present a numerical investigation of the electronic thermal transport in multilayer systems. The figure of merit for different multilayer structures is calculated and optimized to give bias and temperature as a function of work function of the material.