Study of Voltage-Controlled Characteristics for Thermoelectric Coolers

摘要

Based on the Peltier effect, thermoelectric coolers (TECs) have been widely used in solving thermal management issues for semiconductor devices such as semiconductor laser, charge-coupled devices and nanoelectronic circuits with hot-spots. However, performance control mechanisms especially voltage-controlled parameters for TEC still face challenges. In this paper, a standard mathematical model for multi-stage TECs is proposed with thermal resistances from both sides and performance parameters dependent on voltage. The proposed models agreed with experimental results. Compared with the available model, the relative standard deviations between the obtained equivalent thermal conductivity model and experimental results at 25A degrees C and 50A degrees C are decreased by 88.87% and 30.14%, respectively. Also, the relative standard deviations between the proposed thermoelectric figure of merits model and calculated results based on experiments at two different temperatures are decreased by 84.45% and 62.94%, respectively. The results provide a controllable method of thermoelectric characteristics with high accuracy, which can be employed for early thermometric performance estimation for TEC design.