Internal cooling in a semiconductor laser diode

A thermal model of a diode laser structure is developed which includes a bipolar thermoelectric term not included in previous models. It is shown that heterostructure band offsets can be chosen so that there are thermoelectric cooling sources near the active region; this method of cooling is internal to the device itself, as opposed to temperature stabilization schemes which employ an external cooler. A novel laser structure is proposed that is capable of internal cooling in the Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/As/sub y/Sb/sub 1-y/-GaSb material system with /spl lambda/ = 2.64 μm.