Prospects of Thin-Film Thermoelectric Devices for Hot-Spot Cooling and On-Chip Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Advances in thin-film thermoelectric (TE) materials have created opportunities for using TE devices in high heat flux applications such as hot-spot (H-S) cooling and on-chip energy harvesting. In this paper, we compare the performance of TE modules integrated directly on the silicon die with those that are attached to the heat spreader of the chip package. We make use of the Bi 2 Te 3 /Sb 2 Te 3 super lattice material to explore tradeoffs between the two integration options for H-S cooling and energyharvesting applications. Package level finite element simulations show that on-chip energy harvesting can yield up to 30 mW of power from an H-S with a heat flux of 200 W/cm 2 , or the same H-S can be cooled as much as 19°C in the cooling mode. In addition, the TE module integrated on the die is shown to have a disadvantage due to the higher thermal resistance from the hot side of the module to the ambient.

Influence of thickness and microstructure on thermoelectric properties of Mg-doped CuCrO2 delafossite thin films deposited by RF-magnetron sputtering

“…where S ref , ΔV, and ΔT are respectively Seebeck coefficient of the re ference (Aluminum probe is used as reference whose Seebeck thin film. However, for some TE applications, such as flexible tem perature sensor [45 47], fiber optic switches [48], small scale power generation applications [49], large area transparent thin film thermo electric devices [50,51], hot spot (H S) cooling [52] and on chip energy harvesting [53], TE materials are required in thin film form. In parti cular, metal oxide semiconductor processing technology facilitates mass production of low cost thin film thermoelectric devices for thermal management and control.…”

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Mathematical model and optimization of a thin-film thermoelectric generator

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