SBIR Phase I: Photon Assisted Active Cooling

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目提出了一种新型制冷系统，该系统将迄今为止在固态冷却系统中单独使用的三种技术结合在一起：光子学、热电学和电子场发射。该项目提出了混合冷却系统，将创新技术引入到制冷体系结构中，提供了制冷效率的潜力，可以与目前中小型蒸汽压缩制冷相媲美或超越。这种混合系统利用了三种组成技术的优势，同时解决了每种技术的局限性：(1)新兴的光学冷却领域（反斯托克斯荧光）缺乏实用的、可制造的架构；(2)热电技术的转换效率很差，即使有最近的材料进步；(3)场发射冷却受到低冷却通量和可制造实现的影响。在提出的系统中，光学增强的场发射冷却与现有的p型热电材料相结合，从而省去了性能不佳的n型热电材料。这种光的创新使用为微电子和制冷行业创造了一种高效且可制造的热管理技术。这里提出的高效、紧凑型制冷技术的发展有可能通过经济和环境手段对美国乃至其他国家的社会产生重大影响。世界范围内生活水平的提高和全球变暖正在增加制冷的使用，这里提出的创新，如果被证明是成功的，有机会降低中小型制冷系统的电力消耗，减缓全球电力消耗的增长（电力通常来自不可再生资源）。提议的解决方案不含消耗臭氧层的化学物质，也没有全球变暖的潜力，从而减少了环境威胁，因为这项技术取代了现有的制冷技术。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes a novel refrigeration system that brings together three technologies that, up till now, have been used separately in solid state cooling systems: Photonics, Thermoelectrics, and Electron Field Emission. The project proposes hybrid cooling system that bring the innovative technologies into an architecture that offers the potential for refrigeration with efficiencies to rival or surpass what is currently available from small and medium scale vapor compression refrigeration. This hybrid system takes advantages of the strengths of each of the three constituent technologies while addressing the limitations of each: (1) the nascent field of optical cooling (anti-Stokes Fluorescence) lacks practical, manufacturable architectures, (2) thermoelectrics have suffered from poor conversion efficiency, even with recent materials advances, (3) and field emission cooling suffers from low cooling flux and manufacturable implementations. In the proposed system, optically enhanced field emission cooling is coupled with current state of the art p-type thermoelectric materials, allowing the notoriously under performing n-type thermoelectric material to be omitted. This innovative use of light creates an efficient and manufacturable thermal management technology for the microelectronics and refrigeration industries, in response to the solicitation.The development of efficient, compact refrigeration technology proposed here has the potential to significantly impact the society in the United States and beyond through economic and environmental means. Risings standards of living worldwide and global warming are increasing the use of refrigeration, and the innovation proposed here, if proven successful, has the opportunity to lower the power consumption of small and medium scale refrigeration systems, moderating global increases in power consumption (power often extracted from non-renewable sources). The proposed solution contains no ozone depleting chemicals and has zero global warming potential, thereby reducing environmental threats as this technology displaces incumbent refrigeration technologies.