Letter abstract
Nature Nanotechnology
Published online: 25 January 2009 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.417
On-chip cooling by superlattice-based thin-film thermoelectrics
Ihtesham Chowdhury1, Ravi Prasher1,2, Kelly Lofgreen1, Gregory Chrysler1,5, Sridhar Narasimhan1, Ravi Mahajan1, David Koester3, Randall Alley3 & Rama Venkatasubramanian4
Abstract
There is a significant need for site-specific and on-demand cooling in electronic1, 2, optoelectronic3 and bioanalytical4 devices, where cooling is currently achieved by the use of bulky and/or over-designed system-level solutions. Thermoelectric devices can address these limitations while also enabling energy-efficient solutions, and significant progress has been made in the development of nanostructured thermoelectric materials with enhanced figures-of-merit5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. However, fully functional practical thermoelectric coolers have not been made from these nanomaterials due to the enormous difficulties in integrating nanoscale materials into microscale devices and packaged macroscale systems. Here, we show the integration of thermoelectric coolers fabricated from nanostructured Bi2Te3-based thin-film superlattices into state-of-the-art electronic packages. We report cooling of as much as 15 °C at the targeted region on a silicon chip with a high (1,300 W cm-2) heat flux. This is the first demonstration of viable chip-scale refrigeration technology and has the potential to enable a wide range of currently thermally limited applications.
- Intel Corporation, Chandler, Arizona 85226, USA
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA
- Nextreme Thermal Solutions Inc., Durham, North Carolina 27703, USA
- RTI International, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, USA
- Present address: NMB Technologies Corporation, Tempe, Arizona 85283, USA
Correspondence to: Ravi Prasher1,2 e-mail: ravi.s.prasher@intel.com
Correspondence to: Rama Venkatasubramanian4 e-mail: rama@rti.org