Electroluminescent Cooling in III–V Intracavity Diodes: Practical Requirements

Recent studies of electroluminescent cooling (ELC) in III-V structures demonstrate the need to better understand the factors affecting the efficiency of light emission and energy transport in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In this paper, we establish the physical and operational requirements for reaching the efficiencies needed for observing ELC in the III-V intracavity double-diode structures at high powers. The experimentally validated modeling framework used in this paper, coupling the drift-diffusion charge transport model with a photon transport model, indicates that the bulk properties of the III-V materials are already sufficient for ELC. Furthermore, the results suggest that the bulk power conversion efficiency of the LED in the devices, which allowed the experimentally measured record high coupling quantum efficiency of 70%, already exceeds 115%. However, as shown here, direct observation of ELC by electrical measurements still requires a combination of a more efficient suppression of the nonradiative surface recombination at the LED walls and the reduction of the detection losses in the photodetector of the intracavity structures.