Structural Design for Dimensional Stability of Thermocouples in Thermoelectric Energy Harvester

M. D. Chen; J. Y. Wang; S. M. Yang; M. H. Tsai

doi:10.1109/JSEN.2018.2875153

Structural Design for Dimensional Stability of Thermocouples in Thermoelectric Energy Harvester

M. D. Chen, J. Y. Wang, S. M. Yang, M. H. Tsai

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The design of thermoelectric energy harvester in hybrid configuration by CMOS process has been known desirable. Thermal isolation cavity on the top and/or bottom of a thermocouple to increase its thermal resistance is necessary to achieve better harvester performance. However, the thermocouple becomes suspended and may suffer from poor dimension stability on wearable device applications. This paper aims at improving the dimension stability of thermoelectric energy harvester by a structural support design. A harvester with a thermal isolation cavity of 10 μm in depth and a structural support of 4 μm in length is developed to minimize heat leakage and to provide the dimension stability of thermocouples. Compared with many previous works, the harvester design implemented by BiCMOS standard process (TSMC 0.18-μm SiGe 3P6M) is shown to achieve a superior power factor of 0.125 μW /cm²K² and a voltage factor of 23.53 V/cm²K.

Original language	English
Article number	8494766
Pages (from-to)	58-64
Number of pages	7
Journal	IEEE Sensors Journal
Volume	19
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2018.2875153
Publication status	Published - 2019 Jan 1

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Instrumentation
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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10.1109/JSEN.2018.2875153

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title = "Structural Design for Dimensional Stability of Thermocouples in Thermoelectric Energy Harvester",

abstract = "The design of thermoelectric energy harvester in hybrid configuration by CMOS process has been known desirable. Thermal isolation cavity on the top and/or bottom of a thermocouple to increase its thermal resistance is necessary to achieve better harvester performance. However, the thermocouple becomes suspended and may suffer from poor dimension stability on wearable device applications. This paper aims at improving the dimension stability of thermoelectric energy harvester by a structural support design. A harvester with a thermal isolation cavity of 10 μm in depth and a structural support of 4 μm in length is developed to minimize heat leakage and to provide the dimension stability of thermocouples. Compared with many previous works, the harvester design implemented by BiCMOS standard process (TSMC 0.18-μm SiGe 3P6M) is shown to achieve a superior power factor of 0.125 μW /cm2K2 and a voltage factor of 23.53 V/cm2K.",

author = "Chen, {M. D.} and Wang, {J. Y.} and Yang, {S. M.} and Tsai, {M. H.}",

note = "Funding Information: Manuscript received March 21, 2018; revised August 23, 2018; accepted September 25, 2018. Date of publication October 17, 2018; date of current version December 7, 2018. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant 105-2221-E006-110-MY3, in part by the National Chip Implementation Center, Taiwan, for CMOS Process Support, and in part by National Nano Device Laboratories, Taiwan, for dry etching support. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Prof. Mehdi Javanmard. (Corresponding author: S. M. Yang.) M. D. Chen, J. Y. Wang, and S. M. Yang are with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan (e-mail: smyang@mail.ncku.edu.tw). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2001-2012 IEEE.",

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Structural Design for Dimensional Stability of Thermocouples in Thermoelectric Energy Harvester

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