Micro-coolers fabricated as a component in an integrated circuit

Abstract

The packing density and power capacity of integrated electronics is increasing resulting in higher thermal flux densities. Improved thermal management techniques are required and one approach is to include thermoelectric coolers as part of the integrated circuit. An analysis will be described showing that the supporting substrate will have a large influence on the cooling capacity of the thermoelectric cooler. In particular, for materials with a low ZT figure of merit (for example gallium arsenide (GaAs) based compounds) the substrate will have to be substantially thinned to obtain cooling, which may preclude the use of thermoelectric coolers, for example, as part of a GaAs based integrated circuit. Further, using experimental techniques to measure only the small positive cooling temperature difference (ΔT) between the anode (Th) and the cathode (Tc) contacts can be misinterpreted as cooling when in fact it is heating.