High Thermoelectric Cooling Performance of Junction Thermoelectric Transistors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel thermoelectric transistor cooler using BiSbTe and BiSeTe materials, achieving a maximum temperature difference of up to 242.89K by coupling thermoelectric and transistor effects.

Contribution

It presents a new thermoelectric transistor design that significantly enhances cooling performance through coupled thermoelectric and transistor effects, analyzed with a DC circuit model.

Findings

Maximum temperature difference of 242.89K achieved.

Effective cooling with base region widths as small as 12.78nm.

Coupling thermoelectric and transistor effects enhances cooling performance.

Abstract

To achieve high performance thermoelectric materials and devices, thermoelectric transistors, which integrate thermoelectric effects with transistor technology, represent a promising approach. Here p type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 and n type Bi2Te2.97Se0.03 are used as the constituent materials for an NPN transistor. By applying forward bias to the emitter and reverse bias to the collector to form a common-base triode configuration, the thermoelectric effect, transistor effect, and interfacial effects within the NPN heterostructure are coupled. This NPN heterostructure induces temperature increase (heat release) at the forward biased end and temperature decrease (heat absorption) at the reverse biased end. Therefore, this device becomes a new type of thermoelectric transistor cooler. Furthermore, a DC equivalent circuit method is introduced to analyze the cooling performance of the thermoelectric transistor cooler. The results show that when the emitter voltage of the NPN thermoelectric transistor cooler is 0.01925V, the collector voltage is 0.2124V, the corresponding base region width is 0.17nm, the maximum temperature difference of 242.89K can be obtained. Even if the base region width is limited to a level of 10 nanometers, for example when the base region width is 12.78nm, the maximum temperature differenced can still reach 174.15K. The research results above indicate that the thermoelectric transistor, which synergistically combines the thermoelectric effect with transistor technology, can effectively enhance the maximum temperature difference that typical thermoelectric cooling can achieve.