The performances of Peltier cooling depend first of all, on the thermoelectric properties of the thermoelectric (TE) materials and secondly on the thermal design. A survey will be given of present and future TE materials, bulk and thin film. The technologies of manufacturing the materials and of manufacturing TE modules (a rigid assembly of TE couples) will be presented with future trends. Cooling systems from milliwatts to kilowatts with temperature differentials from a few K to more than 100 K will be examined. Present day and pending applications will be reviewed. The figure of merit Z is the best overall parameter to characterize TE material, We will examine, for a standard air-air modular cooling unit, the influence of higher values of Z, on the cooling power and the coefficient of performance COP (=cooling power/electrical power). Also the influence on the cost of the system will be estimated. The COP of TE is compared to the COP of a small HFC type compressor. The aspect of development cost will be addressed as it is a major drawback to the increase of new developments.
[1]
K.H.J. Buschow,et al.
New Class of Materials: Half-Metallic Ferromagnets
,
1983
.
[2]
Mildred S. Dresselhaus,et al.
The Effect of Quantum Well Structures on the Thermoelectric Figure of Merit
,
1992
.
[3]
Mildred S. Dresselhaus,et al.
Effect of quantum-well structures on the thermoelectric figure of merit.
,
1993,
Physical review. B, Condensed matter.
[4]
Richard Ewell,et al.
New materials and devices for thermoelectric applications
,
1997,
IECEC-97 Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (Cat. No.97CH6203).
[5]
T. Harman,et al.
Special Techniques for Measurement of Thermoelectric Properties
,
1958
.
[6]
M. Dresselhaus,et al.
Prospects for High Thermoelectric Figures of Merit in 2D Systems
,
1997
.
[7]
Brian C. Sales,et al.
Thermoelectric Materials: New Approaches to an Old Problem
,
1997
.