నైరూప్య

Investigation of the Heat Absorption Capacity of Silicon Schottky and PN Junctions

Agwu Daberechi David, Nkwachukwu Chukwuchekwa

The numerous advantages of using thermoelectric devices has led to continuous research to achieve their optimum coefficient of performance. Recently, some researchers in their publication presented schottky junctions as a very good heat absorbing device and developed a model for the heat absorption rate of this material. This work evaluated their postulation and found out that theoretically they are not wrong. However laboratory tests on sample diodes (1N5817, 1N5822, 1N5392 and 1N5408) indicated that their postulation cannot be realised by just biasing the diodes as they proposed. Both the schottky junctions (1N5817 and 1N5822) and PN junctions (1N5392 and 1N5408) failed to absorb heat in reverse bias mode, irrespective of the applied voltage. Rather they release heat upon breaking down. At voltages below reverse break down voltage, PN junctions appear not to absorb or release heat energy.