Investigation on reliability of thermoelectric cooler for space remote sensing

This paper mainly investigates various factors that influence the quality and the reliability of a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) for space applications. TE material degradation and metal junctions detachment are two major factors that lead to the degradation or failure of TEC. Qualification and screening tests are needed to make TEC be widely applied to space remote sensing. The defective TEC products can be distinguished with qualified TEC products by thermal and mechanical cycling impact experiments. These differences, such as micro-cracks and metal junctions detachment, could be demonstrated by tests of thermoelectric parameter, and then the defective TEC product can be removed. Compared with test of resistance, some indices, figure of merit, time constant, resistance, maximum DT as thermoelectric testing parameters to screen TEC products are measured and the condition of temperature and random vibration experiments is set after many discussions. Finally, ten TEC products are tested before and after thermal and mechanical experiment, and then a standard of qualification and screening tests of TEC products is established for space applications.