Thermoelectric characteristics of the thermopile sensors with variations of the width and the thickness of the electrodeposited bismuth-telluride and antimony-telluride thin films

Abstract

Thermopile sensors were processed on glass substrates by using successive electrodeposition of p-type Sb-Te and n-type Bi-Te thin films, and their thermoelectric characteristics were measured. The thermopile sensor, consisting of the p-n legs of 2 μm-thickness and 50 μm-width, exhibited the sensitivity of 24.8mV/K. By changing the width of the p-n thin-film legs from 50 to 100μm, the sensitivity decreased to 15.4 mV/K because of less pairs of the p-n thin-film legs in the thermopile. With increasing the thickness of the thin-film legs from 2 to 5 μm, the sensitivity was improved to 36.5 mV/K due to higher Seebeck coefficients of the 5 μm-thick Bi-Te and Sb-Te films than those of the 2 μm-thick films. © 2010 the Japan Institute of Metals.