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Effect of Thermoelectric Leg Thickness in a Planar Thin Film TEC Device on Different Substrates

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Abstract

Recently, mobile application processors (APs) have suffered from thermal issues such as local hot spot generation. Several approaches for chip cooling, such as dynamic thermal management, and heat pipe cooling, have been attempted so far, but, these solutions cannot completely eliminate increasing thermal issues. Therefore, in this study, we fabricated a planar type of thin film thermoelectric cooler (TEC) as an active cooling device for a mobile AP chip. We studied the effect of thickness on a planar thin film TEC device related to Joule heating and demonstrated the Peltier cooling effect on polyimide (PI) and Si substrates. The optimal thicknesses of n-type Bi2Te3 and p-type Sb2Te3 films were evaluated by ANSYS® simulation, and are 5.05 μm and 5.45 μm, respectively. It was shown that heat moves to the TE leg on the PI substrate, while the Si substrate serves as a heat sink according to the IR thermography analysis. The optimal thickness of the TE showed a temperature difference between the cold junction and hot junction up to 1.3 °C.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the MOTIE (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (10049130) and KSRC (Korea Semiconductor Research Consortium) support program for the development of the future semiconductor device and by the Creative Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2017M3D1A1040688).

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Author notes

  1. Cheol Kim and Sangkug Park have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea

    Cheol Kim, Min-Woo Jeong & Young-Chang Joo

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Soonchunhyang University, 22 Soonchunhyang-ro, Asan, Chungnam, 31538, Republic of Korea

    Sangkug Park, Jeonglim Yoon & Youngcheol Joo

  3. Department of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon-si, 16419, Republic of Korea

    Hai-shan Shen & Hoojeong Lee

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  1. Cheol Kim
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  2. Sangkug Park
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  3. Jeonglim Yoon
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  4. Hai-shan Shen
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  5. Min-Woo Jeong
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  6. Hoojeong Lee
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  7. Youngcheol Joo
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  8. Young-Chang Joo
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Correspondence to Young-Chang Joo.

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Kim, C., Park, S., Yoon, J. et al. Effect of Thermoelectric Leg Thickness in a Planar Thin Film TEC Device on Different Substrates. Electron. Mater. Lett. 15, 686–692 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-019-00167-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-019-00167-2

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