MAINSTREAM ENGINEERING CORP — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N181-081

Description

Optical cooling is a unique and promising cooling method capable of cooling to cryogenic temperatures in the absence of moving parts, noise, or vibration. Only a laser is used to pump in light; a semiconducting material upconverts this energy to reject higher energy photons producing a net cooling effect. Optical cooling is contrasted by mechanical systems, such as Stirling cryocoolers which can be loud, prone to vibration, and rapidly decrease in efficiency with thermal lift. Optical cooling may also be able to scale to the thermal load as the cooling power is linearly proportional to the laser power. And unlike thermoelectric Peltier coolers, optical coolers may be able to achieve temperatures of < 10 K.Mainstream will overcome poor efficiencies of conventionally optical coolers by improving each of the components of the optical cooling device to improve the quantum yield, film integration, and emitted photon rejection. In Phase I, Mainstream will demonstrate the viability of optical cooling via quantum dot anti-Stokes upconversion to generate net cooling. In Phase II, the integration of the optical cooler with a specified device will be designed, fabricated, and tested leading to immediate commercialization.