Design and fabrication of an IC compatible on-chip thermoelectric cooler

The field of thermo-electrics is gaining more interest in enormously wide scope of applications comprising the areas: active cooling at the micro scale (spot cooling on microprocessor), thermoelectric feedback, temperature control on microfluidic devices, biochemistry (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and low power consumption consumer products, such as wrist watch or hearing aids recollecting waste thermal energy. However, most of efforts have been focused on the development of highly performable thermoelectric material so that these works are limited to either material research or optimizing/improving the conventional thermoelectric devices [1 ][2], Research on the on-chip integration of thin-film based thermoelectric element and the development of on-chip applications of thermo-electrics are lagging behind. This paper reports designing and fabrication of an on-chip integrated thin-film-based thermoelectric cooler as well as the characterization of fabricated thermoelectric material.