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Design and thermoreflectance imaging of high-speed SiGe superlattice microrefrigerators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2011

Bjorn Vermeersch*
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California – Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, SOE2, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.
Je-Hyeong Bahk
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California – Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, SOE2, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.
James Christofferson
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California – Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, SOE2, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.
Ali Shakouri
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California – Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, SOE2, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.
*
*Corresponding Author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Over the past few years, thermoelectric (TE) materials have been receiving an increasing amount of attention owing to their promising potential for energy conversion and thermal management applications. Thermal characterisation techniques offer a powerful tool in investigating and optimizing the TE device performance. In addition, they can provide a better understanding of the underlying fundamental principles such as Peltier effects at the interfaces of the active medium. In this paper, we present the design and thermal characterisation of integrated highspeed microcoolers based on SiGe superlattices. The electrode metalisation is laid out as a coplanar waveguide, enabling to supply electrical pulses with short rise times to the coolers. We employ a variety of CCD-based transient thermoreflectance imaging methods to perform an extensive dynamic thermal analysis. These techniques provide 2-D temperature maps of the chip surface with ∼100ns temporal and submicron spatial resolution without the need to scan the sample. Net cooling in the 2 degree range is observed, with response times well below 1μs. This is almost two orders of magnitude faster compared to the best in the literature. The obtained images also confirm the previous observations that the Peltier cooling term responds faster than the Joule heating term, in agreement with their expected locality and associated thermal mass. This provides potential to study ultrafast electron-phonon interactions during Peltier effects.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2011

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References

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