Multiscale Design of Nanostructured Thermoelectric Coolers: Effects of Contact Resistances

Our objective is to develop a multiscale simulator for thermoelectric cooler devices, in which the material parameters are obtained atomistically using a combination of molecular dynamics and tight-binding simulations and then used in the system level design. After benchmarking the simulator against a recent experimental work, we carry out a detailed numerical investigation of the performance of Bi2Te3 nanowire-based thermoelectric devices for hot-spot cooling. The results suggest that active hotspot cooling of as much as 23°C with a high heat flux is achievable using such low-dimensionality structures. However, it has been observed that thermal and electrical contact resistances, which are quite large in nanostructures, play a critical role in determining the cooling range and lead to significant performance degradation that must be addressed before these devices can be deployed in such applications.