| dc.description.abstract | As the size of mobile devices become smaller and high power output causes difficulties to thermal management, micro thermoelectric coolers(TEC) are a potential solution. The input of stable current to the vertical TEC is a major research project, and pulsed current can also be aimed at making the temperature lower than that in steady state, which is advantageous for transient hot spot cooling. However, there is a lack of information about current pulse applied on a planar TEC. Therefore, this paper uses numerical simulation and couple multiple physical fields. Thermal diffusion and charge conservation equations are solved and thermoelectric effects is considered to discuss the influence of thermoelectric module configuration on single and two-stage of supercooling characteristics of the cooler.
First, we confirmed the optimum steady-state current about the maximum temperature difference which TEC can reached, and then input pulse current to TEC to analyze the supercooling. In steady state, TE modules in single-stage cooler don’t affect the cooling temperature difference, but cooling power. Afterwards, TE modules are connected after first stage to form a two-stage cooler. The more modules in the second stage is, the larger the cold side temperature difference is. Under the transient analysis, the supercooling temperature and holding time of the single-stage cooler are both inferior to the two-stage refrigerator, but the overshoot temperature and the recovery time are opposite. This is due to the joule heating of additional TE modules to lead more heat flux flow back to cold side.
Finally, we simulate the micro-cooler under heat loading, and the results show that the pulsed cooling under stable heat loading is not as expected. But if it’s applied on the cooling of transient hot spots, it can effectively suppress the hot spots and avoid heating elements. The simulations in this article are based on ideal conditions. In the future, contact resistances and thermal stress fields can be added to analyze the influence of its cooling performance, and can be verified with the experiment of fabricating TECs | en_US |