Thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is a solid state heat pump which uses the semiconductor materials, by Peltier effect, to provide instantaneous cooling or heating. It has the advantage of having no moving parts and thus maintenance free. Due to flexibility in design and miniaturization, there is an opportunity for TEC to be integrated into a temperature sensitive device like laser diodes for temperature stabilization. A TEC module with dimension of 3mm x 3.8mm x Imm which could fit into a Transceiver Optical Sub-Assembly (TOSA) device was demonstrated using conventional dicing and SMT process. The TEC module assembled with 18 pairs of elements of 0.3mm x 0.3mm x 0.4mm is able to achieve a Figure-of-Merit (Z) of 2.3. The TEC module was also tested extensively in thermal stress test, temperature storage test and power cycling test. All tests showed a stable performance with change in AC resistance of less than 5%.
We proposed a methodology for simulation and design of thermoelectric coolers based on the energy balance among the Peltier heat, Joule heat, conduction heat, radiation heat and convection heat and by using the Computational Fluid Dynamics software. Thermal index was proposed for easy prediction of a TEC module efficiency. The prototype of the TEC module was fabricated after the design optimization. Experimental validation was performed by using a thermal characterization system including a chiller and a thermal analyzer. It was found that the simulation and experimental results agreed well.
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