Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 39: Poster III

HL 39.18: Poster

Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 15:00–18:00, P3

Challenges and Opportunities for Thermoelectric Coolers — •Fangyi Hu, Meng Jiang, Matthias Wuttig, and Yuan Yu — I. Physikalisches Institut (IA), RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Thermoelectric (TE) materials allow a direct interconversion between heat and electricity, providing an eco-friendly and sustainable energy solution. Particularly, thermoelectric coolers based on the Peltier effect achieve high-precision temperature control without any refrigerant. Bi2Te3-based materials have beenused in commercial TE cooling due to their high near-room-temperature figure-or-merit (ZT). Yet, the low earth abundance of Te restricts the large-scale application of this compound. Discovering Te-free materials with comparable cooling performance is an urgent task. This requires a small bandgap and low thermal conductivity for the material at low temperatures. The recently developed concept of metavalent bonding provides a new avenue for discovering potential candidates. Besides materials, the device design and effective heat dissipation on the hot side are of critical importance. This Poster will summarize the challenges and opportunities for TE cooling materials and devices. We hope that it can shed light on the development of new TE coolers.

Keywords: thermoelectric materials; thermoelectric cooling; challenges; opportunities; devices