High-Performance Planar Thin-Film Thermoelectric Cooler Based on Sputtered Nanocrystalline BiTe/BiSbTe Thin Films for On-Chip Cooling.

The development of high-performance thin-film thermoelectric coolers (TFTECs) that are compatible with standard integrated circuit processes and can reduce power consumption is critical to achieving large-scale applications. In this work, we fabricate a planar TFTEC based on nanocrystalline p-type BiSbTe and n-type BiTe thin films using magnetron sputtering, standard lithography, and postannealing processes. The power factors of the BiSbTe and BiTe thin films reach 3.

Ultrahigh Power Factor of Sputtered Nanocrystalline N-Type BiTe Thin Film via Vacancy Defect Modulation and Ti Additives.

Magnetron-sputtered thermoelectric thin films have the potential for reproducibility and scalability. However, lattice mismatch during sputtering can lead to increased defects in the epitaxial layer, which poses a significant challenge to improving their thermoelectric performance. In this work, nanocrystalline n-type BiTe thin films with an average grain size of ≈110 nm are prepared using high-temperature sputtering and post-annealing.

The simulated cooling performance of a thin-film thermoelectric cooler with coupled-thermoelements connected in parallel.

The thermoelements of the traditional thin-film thermoelectric cooler (TEC) are connected electrically in series, thus the performance of traditional thin-film TEC reduces sharply when there is something wrong with any thermoelement. On account of this deficiency, we proposed a novel thin-film TEC with a couple of thermoelements electrically connected in parallel and then electrically connected in series to the next couple of thermoelements. The performance and reliability of the novel thin-film TEC is compared with the traditional thin-film TEC.