Silicon-based thermogenerator for wide temperature range applications embedded using metal-spray-deposition

A new silicon based thermogenerator with a reduced parasitic contact resistivity and respectively a broad working range from 250°K up to 1000°K is presented. The reduction of the contact resistivity was achieved due to changes in the contact pads geometry including implementation of three-dimensional contacts as well as altering of their characteristic by additional dopant diffusion. The resulting thermogenerator was embedded in metal using the method of metal-spray-deposition, which ensures high yield of the successfully embedded thermogenerators (30 functional of the total of 32) due to relatively low mechanical forces applied during the embedding process and reduced thermomechanical stress during the following cool-down phase.