Reverse Heat Flow with Peltier-Induced Thermoinductive Effect

Abstract

The inductive component is the only missing components in thermal circuits unlike their electromagnetic counterparts. Herein, we report an electrically controllable reverse heat flow, which can be regarded as a proper equivalent of the “thermoinductive” effect. The underlying concept is the heating and cooling of the ends of the material by the Peltier effect under an applied ac current; this form a negative temperature gradient in the opposite direction in a controllable manner. We have derived the exact solution indicating that this reverse heat flow occurs universally in solid-state systems, even in conventional metallic Cu, and that it is considerably enhanced by thermoelectric properties (i.e., a large Seebeck coefficient and low thermal conductivity). A local cooling of 25 mK was demonstrated in (Bi,Sb)2Te3, which was explained by our exact solution. This electrically controlled reverse heat flow is directly applicable to the fabrication of a “thermoinductor” in thermal circuits.