Introduction to Thermo-Photo-Electronics

Abstract

Building the foundations of Thermo-Photo-Electronics became possible only after the correction of thermodynamic errors in the traditional theory of semiconductor Electronics and Photo-Electronics. It is these errors that determined the output of the asymptotics of the operating parameters of semiconductor electronic devices, in particular, both the saturation of the limiting clock frequency of processors, and the saturation of the efficiency of both thermoelectric and photoelectric converters. But in semiconductors, although these thermodynamic errors manifested themselves not only in the instrumental, but also in the technological aspect, they could not prohibit semiconductor Electronics itself, unlike Electronics based on other materials. It’s just that a number of qualitative mistakes were made in the theory of semiconductor devices and photo devices. In this work, it is shown that the energy band diagram of semiconductor contacts itself was constructed with a significant omission—without taking into account the temperature force on the contact. At the same time, because of the incorrect calculation of currents according to the outdated formulas of Richardson-Langmuir-Deshman, there were also PROHIBITIONS. So the practitioners compensated for the errors of the theory with “empirical corrections”. So electronics engineers often made devices not according to a strict theory (which simply did not exist until now), but on a hunch and according to empirical local laws. And only the correction of the historical mistakes made it possible to expand the phenomenology of the description of processes in a Solid Body, on the basis of which it is possible to make calculations of highly efficient elements of Photo-Thermo-Electronics.