Impact of Heat Guide Thickness on Output Power of Planar Silicon Thermoelectric Generator

Effect of metal heat guide structure on the performance of planar Si thermoelectric generator embedded in SiO2 inter-layer dielectric

“…This trend was reported in previous work using μ-TEG without the ILD. 31) In this work, a similar trend was also observed in Sample B μ-TEG with the ILD. This can be explained by the thick ILD suppressing the heat leakage from the heat source to the cold side terminal, as shown in the simulation of the previous work.…”

“…The ratio of deterioration was much less than the simulation estimate made in a previous work. 31) In the previous simulation, the |V OC | was deteriorated from 60 μV to 10 μV by embedding the μ-TEG in the ILD, which is 0.17 times. One reason for less deterioration of the V OC in the experiment could be the contact thermal resistance between the heat source and the device surface which was ignored in the simulation.…”

“…This can be explained by the thick ILD suppressing the heat leakage from the heat source to the cold side terminal, as shown in the simulation of the previous work. 31) This result indicates that thickening HG structure enhances the V OC , irrespective of with or without the ILD. The μ-TEG with the ILD and the 0.3 μm thick HG (in Sample B) showed positively reversed V OC in Fig.…”

“…In a previous work, 31) we experimentally verified the TE performance dependence on the thickness of the HG using a simplified device sample without SiO 2 ILD. Sub-μm-thick HG enhances the TE performance by suppressing heat leakage to the cold side terminal through the air.…”