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The paper is devoted to the analysis of thermoelectric cooling phenomena in semiconductors containing potential barriers (p-n-junction). The formulation of an adequate self-consistent theoretical model describing the effect is presented. The role of the recombination rate as a new source of heat in linear approximation of the electric current was discussed, leading to a reformulation of the heat balance equations. The importance of redistribution of nonequilibrium charge carriers, which has been ignored in most publications on this subject, is also shown. The conventional theory of thermoelectric cooling, not taking into account the influence of the nonequilibrium charge carriers, is shown to be inadequate. Besides, when the recombination rate decreases, cooling changes to heating.

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The temperature distribution in the homogeneous bipolar semiconductor, when the electrical current flows through it, is investigated. The case of the linear approximation with respect to an electrical current is considered. The presence of nonequilibrium charge carriers as well as the processes of recombination is taken into account. It is shown that the temperature distribution in a bipolar semiconductor in a one-dimensional case is a linear function of a coordinate under both small and strong recombinations. It is established that the temperature distribution is a nonlinear function of a coordinate under the finite value of recombination which depends upon the fundamentally new characteristic length for semiconductors.

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