Transient thermoelectric self-cooling of a germanium hotspot

Thermoelectric cooling has been well documented as a solution for hotspots in electronic devices. Hotspots arise from the heterogeneous power dissipation of most computer chips and power electronics. This paper reviews the recent progress in thermoelectric self-cooling and goes on to study the transient behavior of a germanium thermoelectric self-cooler. A 3-D thermoelectric simulation is used to explore the effects of various initial conditions, current pulse durations, current pulse magnitudes, and die thicknesses. Additionally, a new cooling metric is introduced in order to more effectively characterize the advantage of transient cooling. The results suggest that transient thermoelectric cooling has the potential to improve hotspot temperature reduction by approximately 30% relative to what is achievable in steady state operation.