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Thin-film thermoelectric devices with high room-temperature figures of merit

Nature volume 413, pages 597–602 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Thermoelectric materials are of interest for applications as heat pumps and power generators. The performance of thermoelectric devices is quantified by a figure of merit, ZT, where Z is a measure of a material's thermoelectric properties and T is the absolute temperature. A material with a figure of merit of around unity was first reported over four decades ago, but since then—despite investigation of various approaches—there has been only modest progress in finding materials with enhanced ZT values at room temperature. Here we report thin-film thermoelectric materials that demonstrate a significant enhancement in ZT at 300 K, compared to state-of-the-art bulk Bi2Te3 alloys. This amounts to a maximum observed factor of ∼2.4 for our p-type Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 superlattice devices. The enhancement is achieved by controlling the transport of phonons and electrons in the superlattices. Preliminary devices exhibit significant cooling (32 K at around room temperature) and the potential to pump a heat flux of up to 700 W cm-2; the localized cooling and heating occurs some 23,000 times faster than in bulk devices. We anticipate that the combination of performance, power density and speed achieved in these materials will lead to diverse technological applications: for example, in thermochemistry-on-a-chip, DNA microarrays, fibre-optic switches and microelectrothermal systems.

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Figure 1: Hole transport across the Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 superlattice interface.
Figure 2: The ZT of a thermoelectric device.
Figure 3
Figure 4: Cooling properties.
Figure 5: Demonstration of localized and high-speed cooling/heating obtainable with thin-film devices.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the US Office of Naval Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, 27709, North Carolina, USA

    Rama Venkatasubramanian, Edward Siivola, Thomas Colpitts & Brooks O'Quinn

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  1. Rama Venkatasubramanian
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Correspondence to Rama Venkatasubramanian.

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Venkatasubramanian, R., Siivola, E., Colpitts, T. et al. Thin-film thermoelectric devices with high room-temperature figures of merit. Nature 413, 597–602 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35098012

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