Study on temperature stability improvement of on-chip reference elements using integrated Peltier coolers

This paper presents the concept and feasibility of a microthermostat that, besides active heating, employs active cooling by means of specially developed on-chip integrated Peltier devices. It is shown that the design for best cooling performance can be optimized through a simple criterion, i.e., the width ratio of the thermoelectric elements. Subsequently, the overall design criteria of the microthermostat are presented. System performance is shown to critically depend on the approach selected for heating, cooling, and temperature sensing.