Silicon integrated circuit thermoelectric generators with a high specific power generation capacity
Silicon integrated circuit thermoelectric generators with a high specific power generation capacity
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DOI：
10.1038/s41928-019-0271-9
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发表时间：
2019-07-01
影响因子：
34.3
通讯作者：
Lee, Mark
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hu, Gangyi;Edwards, Hal;Lee, Mark
微电子热电发电机（TEG）能够将废热转化为电能，其应用范围从集成电路的片上热管理到物联网传感器的环境能源。然而，TEG与硅集成电路技术不兼容，这阻碍了它们在微电子领域的广泛应用。在此，我们报道了利用在工业硅互补金属 - 氧化物 - 半导体（CMOS）生产线上制造的纳米结构硅热电堆制成的TEG。这些TEG在室温附近展现出高的比发电能力（高达29微瓦·厘米⁻²·开⁻²），与典型的基于（铋，锑）₂（硒，碲）₃的TEG具有竞争力。高发电能力源于CMOS工艺能够制造出具有低填充率的极高面密度热电偶，并能精确控制电阻抗和热阻抗。还发现当热电偶宽度减小时，TEG的功率显著增加，这为进一步改进提供了途径。与（铋，锑）₂（硒，碲）₃ TEG不同，我们的硅集成电路TEG能够以极低的边际成本无缝集成到大规模硅CMOS微电子电路中。
Microelectronic thermoelectric generators (TEGs), which can recycle waste heat into electrical power, have applications ranging from the on-chip thermal management of integrated circuits to environmental energy sources for Internet-of-things sensors. However, the incompatibility of TEGs with silicon integrated circuit technology has prevented their broad adoption in microelectronics. Here, we report TEGs created using nanostructured silicon thermopiles fabricated on an industrial silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process line. These TEGs exhibit a high specific power generation capacity (up to 29 mu W cm(-2) K-2) near room temperature, which is competitive with typical (Bi,Sb)(2) (Se,Te)(3)-based TEGs. The high power capacity results from the ability of CMOS processing to fabricate a very high areal density of thermocouples with low packing fraction and to carefully control electrical and thermal impedances. TEG power was also found to increase significantly when thermocouple width was decreased, providing a path to further improvements. Unlike (Bi,Sb)(2) (Se,Te)(3) TEGs, our silicon integrated circuit TEGs could be seamlessly integrated into large-scale silicon CMOS microelectronic circuits at very low marginal cost.