Cooling characteristics of TECs

TEC is the abbreviation of thermoelectric cooler, which is a kind of heat pumps. It has many advantages of no sliding parts, no noise, long service lifetime, good reliability and flexible control. When supplying a power supply, TEC can be rapidly cooling, and when the current reverses, it can also be rapidly heating. Based on the above advantages, TECs have been widely used for mechanical fields and electronic fields. Here are some introductions to cooling characteristics of TECs.

TEC consists of thermopiles, cold end heat exchanger and hot end heat exchanger. The thermopile is made up of many couples and for the current, each couple is in series; for heat current, each couple is in parallel. Therefore, when analyzing thermopile performance, it only needs to analyze couple performance. The refrigerating capacity, voltage value, input power and refrigeration coefficient of a pair of coupleare respectively:

Where，

Q01-Cooling capacity (W);

I-Working current (A);

K1-Thermal conductivity (w/k);

△T-Hot and cold end temperature difference

R1-Resistance value (Ω);

αpn -Thermoelectric power(V/K);

Tc- Cold end temperature (K);

The refrigeration performance of the couple has relationship with material properties, element size and working voltage. The material properties are inherent characteristics, and when the element size is in accordance with the following relations, it has        the optimal performance:

Where,
λp, λn-Thermal conductivity of materials[w／(m．K)]；
ρp, ρn-Resistivity(Ω/K);

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