Journal
NANOSCALE AND MICROSCALE THERMOPHYSICAL ENGINEERING
Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 143-155Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.1080/10893950600643063
Keywords
thermoelectric; generator; optimization; heat-sink; thin-film
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Many recent advances in thermoelectrics have focused on the nanoscale engineering of materials for higher figure of merit (Z). A thermoelectric generator using these thin-film materials can present new challenges due to its inherently large temperature gradient, but also correspondingly larger generated power if the heat can he managed. In such cases performance is expected to be limited as much by the heat sink as by intrinsic material properties. New criteria for optimizing the generated power density of devices in this regime are discussed here The effects of future material improvements on performance are studied, with the surprising result that optimizing material Z is not the best strategy for optimizing efficiency or power in this regime. The theory is tested with a numerical solution of the Onsager relations.
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