The simulated cooling performance of a thin-film thermoelectric cooler with coupled-thermoelements connected in parallel

Tingzhen Ming; Sen Chen; Yonggao Yan; Tingrui Gong; Jianlong Wan; Yongjia Wu

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10025

The simulated cooling performance of a thin-film thermoelectric cooler with coupled-thermoelements connected in parallel

Heliyon. 2022 Aug 2;8(8):e10025. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10025. eCollection 2022 Aug.

Authors

Tingzhen Ming^{1

2}, Sen Chen¹, Yonggao Yan³, Tingrui Gong⁴, Jianlong Wan⁵, Yongjia Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China.
² School of Architectural Engineering, Huanggang Normal University, No. 146 Xingang Second Road, Huanggang 438000, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China.
⁴ Microsystem & Terahertz Research Center, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Chengdu 610200, Sichuan, China.
⁵ School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China.

Abstract

The thermoelements of the traditional thin-film thermoelectric cooler (TEC) are connected electrically in series, thus the performance of traditional thin-film TEC reduces sharply when there is something wrong with any thermoelement. On account of this deficiency, we proposed a novel thin-film TEC with a couple of thermoelements electrically connected in parallel and then electrically connected in series to the next couple of thermoelements. The performance and reliability of the novel thin-film TEC is compared with the traditional thin-film TEC. The maximum cooling capacity, the maximum cooling temperature, and the coefficient of performance of the novel and the traditional thin-film TEC are systematically studied and compared when 0, 2, and 4 thermoelements are disabled, respectively. The results show that the performance and reliability of the novel thin-film TEC are superior to that of the traditional thin-film TEC, while the optimal electric current of the novel thin-film TEC current is 2.14 times of that for the traditional thin-film TEC. This work is of great significance to improving the performance and reliability of thin-film thermoelectric devices consisting of dozens of small thermoelements.

Keywords: Coefficient of performance; Reliability; Thin-film thermoelectric cooler.