Principle of determining thermoelectric properties based on I-V curves

This paper describes a measurement principle of determining thermoelectric properties based on obtaining current-voltage (I-V) curves under two different operating conditions: (1) constant temperature difference and (2) constant thermal input flux. In addition to thermoelectric figure-of-merit, other thermoelectric properties including the Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity can also be derived from I-V measurements. An advantage of this technique is its ability to detect the influence of the Thomson effect and to characterize the segmented thermoelectric structures due to the fact that a measurement can be taken under a large temperature difference in a closed circuit condition. Furthermore, it has a potential to achieve high measurement accuracy because the error due to the contact resistance is eliminated.