Micro-coolers fabricated as a component in an integrated circuit

James Glover; Ata Khalid; Alex Stephen; Geoff Dunn; David Cumming; Chris H. Oxley

doi:10.1088/0268-1242/30/1/015005

Micro-coolers fabricated as a component in an integrated circuit

James Glover, Ata Khalid, Alex Stephen, Geoff Dunn, David Cumming, Chris H. Oxley

Physics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The packing density and power capacity of integrated electronics is increasing resulting in higher thermal flux densities. Improved thermal management techniques are required and one approach is to include thermoelectric coolers as part of the integrated circuit. An analysis will be described showing that the supporting substrate will have a large influence on the cooling capacity of the thermoelectric cooler. In particular, for materials with a low ZT figure of merit (for example gallium arsenide (GaAs) based compounds) the substrate will have to be substantially thinned to obtain cooling, which may preclude the use of thermoelectric coolers, for example, as part of a GaAs based integrated circuit. Further, using experimental techniques to measure only the small positive cooling temperature difference (ΔT) between the anode (T_h) and the cathode (T_c) contacts can be misinterpreted as cooling when in fact it is heating.

Original language	English
Article number	015005
Journal	Semiconductor Science and Technology
Volume	30
Issue number	1
Early online date	28 Nov 2014
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1088/0268-1242/30/1/015005
Publication status	Published - 28 Dec 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the staff of the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at the University of Glasgow for fabrication of the micro-coolers. Part of this work was funded by the UK Engineering & Physical Science research Council (EPSRC), grant reference numbers EP/H011862/1, EP/H012966/1 and EP/H012532/1.

Keywords

AlGaAs
GaAs
III-V semiconductors
micro-cooler
superlattice
thermionic

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10.1088/0268-1242/30/1/015005

Cite this

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abstract = "The packing density and power capacity of integrated electronics is increasing resulting in higher thermal flux densities. Improved thermal management techniques are required and one approach is to include thermoelectric coolers as part of the integrated circuit. An analysis will be described showing that the supporting substrate will have a large influence on the cooling capacity of the thermoelectric cooler. In particular, for materials with a low ZT figure of merit (for example gallium arsenide (GaAs) based compounds) the substrate will have to be substantially thinned to obtain cooling, which may preclude the use of thermoelectric coolers, for example, as part of a GaAs based integrated circuit. Further, using experimental techniques to measure only the small positive cooling temperature difference (ΔT) between the anode (Th) and the cathode (Tc) contacts can be misinterpreted as cooling when in fact it is heating.",

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Micro-coolers fabricated as a component in an integrated circuit

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

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