Modeling and analysis of the influence of Thomson effect on micro-thermoelectric coolers considering interfacial and size effects

Abstract Micro-thermoelectric coolers have great potential in the thermal management of highly integrated electronic devices, especially the local cooling. This paper develops a numerical model to explore the influence of Thomson effect on the cooling performance of micro-thermoelectric coolers, capturing interfacial and size effects. The presented model is validated with a commercial micro-thermoelectric cooler. And, analyses are carried out with respect to micro-thermoelectric coolers of different sizes, under different temperatures and cooling loads. The results indicate that a positive Thomson coefficient can improve the cooling capacity, and higher current and thickness correspond to greater impact of Thomson effect. In addition, the decrease of minimum cooling temperature caused by Thomson effect is even more obvious under higher cooling load. The results also show that the influence of Thomson effect on the maximum cooling temperature difference gradually becomes weaker as the cross area to thickness ratio increases. For heat fluxes of 100 W/cm2 and 200 W/cm2, the minimum cooling temperature can be respectively reduced by 2.1 K and 4.1 K, considering Thomson effect. In addition, for the thickness of 10 μm, the increment of maximum cooling temperature difference gradually declines from 2.2 K to 1.1K as the cross area to thickness ratio increases.