In many application areas the power density of power electronic converter system is an important design criteria, which is often limited by the passive components and the cooling system. In order to decrease the size of the cooling system, a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) could be inserted between the semiconductor With the TEC, the temperature drop across the heat sink could be increased so that the volume of the heat sink decreases in cuse the ambient temperature is relatively close to the maximum operating junction temperature, this volume reduction of the heat sink is larger than the additional volume required for the TEC and its power supply as will be shown in this paper. Furthermore, the influence of the TEC on the system efficiency is investigated and using the TEC for actively damping the juncion temperature swing in systems with relatively fast varying losses is discussed.
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