Simplified Thermal Model of Silicon Thermoelectric Microcooler for On-Chip Hot Spot Remediation

Thermal management of on-chip hot spots has become an increasing challenge in recent years because such localized high flux hot spots can not be effectively removed by conventional cooling techniques. The authors have recently explored the novel use of the silicon chip itself as a solid state thermoelectric micrcooler (μTEC) for hot spot thermal management. This paper describes the development and application of a thermo-electric design tool based on closed-form equations for the primary variables. This tool can be used to effectively reduce the complexity and required time for the design and optimization of the silicon microcooler geometry and material properties for on-chip hot spot remediation.