Cooling effect of nanoscale Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 multilayered thermoelectric thin films

Managing high heat flux is one of the greatest technical challenges the integrated circuit (IC) industry is facing because the rising temperature limits device minimization and decreases its lifetime. In this paper, we report the characterization of the cooling effect of nanoscale Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 multilayered thin films. The multilayer thin film was prepared with e-beam evaporation, and had 21 layers (5-nm-thick each layer and 105-nm-thick total). A thermoelectric device of the multilayer film, which is sandwiched between a diode temperature sensor and a platinum temperature sensor, was fabricated to measure the cooling effect. A maximum cooling temperature difference of about 3K was obtained from the film at an applied dc electrical current of 5 mA. The nanoscale multilayer film could be integrated in the IC devices for the application of high-efficiency thermoelectric solid-state cooling. (C) 2012 American Vacuum Society. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4725483]