High-performance electroluminescent refrigeration enabled by photon tunneling

Highlights: • A self-consisted near-field electroluminescent refrigeration model is proposed. • Refrigeration rate is enhanced by more than three orders of magnitude at 10 nm. • The achievable cooling temperature is lowered to about 30 K below the ambient. • The tolerance of nonintrinsic nonradiative recombination is extended to 31.6%. Electroluminescent refrigeration, though theoretically proposed half a century ago, is rarely reported due to the requirement of extremely low nonidealities. Here, we theoretically show that by operating the device in the near-field regime with a vacuum gap down to 10 nm, photon tunneling through evanescent waves can increase the tolerance of non-intrinsic nonradiative recombination to 31.6%. More importantly, the refrigeration rate may be enhanced by 2000-fold over the far-field scenario. In addition, the lowest achievable cooling temperature against the ambient condition of 300 K extends from 284.2 K to 270.6 K. A self-consisted model based on the fluctuation-dissipation theory combined with dyadic Green's function method is developed considering the effect of the chemical potential of photons on the energy of Planck's quantum oscillators. This work opens a route to greatly enhance electroluminescent refrigeration, while relieving the strict material's requirement, for solid-state noncontact thermal management.