Application example: Intel-led Team Demonstrates Chip-Scale Thermoelectric Refrigerator

Following Moore’s Law, semiconductor transistor density double roughly

every 18 months to follow increasing performance demands. Growing

complexity and performance have led to highly non-uniform on-chip

power distribution. The resulting localized high heat flux or “hot spots” are a

major difficulty as they degrade microprocessor performance and

reduce significantly chip reliability. In a 2009 Nature nanotechnology paper, an Intel-led team demonstrated a potential solution based on on-chip cooling using thermoelectric materials. Lowering thermal contact resistance by an order of magnitude is one of the technical hurdles that must be overcome before a commercial device appears on the market. But Maryland’s Bar-Cohen, an IEEE Fellow, who was not involved in the research, imagines thermoelectrics someday being essential for chips in diminutive portable devices, like multitasking smart phones that must handle simultaneous data-intensive processing tasks.