Investigation on binder for thermoelectric module

Physical and electric properties of several silver pastes were investigated to replace conventional Pb-Sn solder used in thermoelectric module. The melting point of the conventional solder is relatively low and its temperature stability is insufficient for use in a high temperature region. Therefore silver paste (epoxy) is a candidate instead of the Pb-Sn solder. A copper block was glued to electrodes using several silver pastes to measure the electric property, and the resistances were measured by four-probe method from 15K to 300K, and the magnetic field dependence was also investigated. The results showed that the resistance of a silver paste adopted nanoparticles (called silver nano paste) was lower than that of any binders used. We concluded that the nano paste is a candidate as a. binder for conventional thermoelectric modules. Besides the nano paste has a possibility to be used on thermoelectric modules in the high temperature region.