pp. 2803-2810
S&M1973 Research Paper of Special Issue https://doi.org/10.18494/SAM.2019.2297 Published in advance: July 9, 2019 Published: September 20, 2019 Design of Planar Si Thermoelectric Generators with Phononic Crystal Patterning [PDF] Masahiro Nomura, Ryoto Yanagisawa, Peter Zimmermann, Patrick Ruther, and Oliver Paul (Received January 15, 2019; Accepted January 31, 2019) Keywords: thermoelectrics, energy harvesting, phonon, phonon engineering, silicon
This paper presents the design and optimization of planar poly-Si thermoelectric generators (TEGs) for energy harvesting application. Temperature and electric potential distributions are simulated using material parameters, which were experimentally obtained from test structures, by the finite element method to evaluate the performance of TEGs. TEGs with unpatterned membranes or membranes with phononic crystal (PnC) nanostructures are investigated to evaluate the increase in power density by nanopatterning. The power density is increased by PnC nanopatterning with larger holes and the optimal bridge length decreases owing to a higher thermal resistance. The series of simulations shows that nanopatterning increases the power density 2.5 times at a smaller bridge length and is also advantageous from the viewpoint of mechanical strength.
Corresponding author: Masahiro NomuraThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Cite this article Masahiro Nomura, Ryoto Yanagisawa, Peter Zimmermann, Patrick Ruther, and Oliver Paul, Design of Planar Si Thermoelectric Generators with Phononic Crystal Patterning, Sens. Mater., Vol. 31, No. 9, 2019, p. 2803-2810. |