Control Principles and On-Chip Circuits for Active Cooling Using Integrated Superlattice-Based Thin-Film Thermoelectric Devices

Author

Alexandrov, Borislav ; Sullivan, Owen ; Song, William J. ; Yalamanchili, Sudhakar ; Kumar, Sudhakar ; Mukhopadhyay, Saibal

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

Volume

22

Issue

9

fYear

2014

fDate

Sept. 2014

Firstpage

1909

Lastpage

1919

Abstract

Superlattice thin-film thermoelectric coolers (TECs) are emerging as a promising technology for hot spot mitigation in microprocessors. This paper studies the prospect of on-demand cooling with advanced TECs integrated at the back of the heat spreader inside a package (integrated TEC). Using thermal compact models of the chip and package with integrated TECs, the control principles for TEC-assisted transient cooling are presented. The control principles are implemented in a 130-nm CMOS process and cosimulated with the thermal system to show their feasibility and energy overheads. The simulation results show potential for extending the time for which a chip and package can sustain a high power load.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; integrated circuit modelling; integrated circuit packaging; semiconductor superlattices; thermal analysis; thermoelectric cooling; thermoelectric devices; thin film devices; transient analysis; CMOS process; TEC-assisted transient cooling; active cooling; control principles; energy overheads; heat spreader; high power load; hot spot mitigation; integrated superlattice-based thin-film thermoelectric devices; microprocessors; on-chip circuits; on-demand cooling; size 130 nm; superlattice thin-film thermoelectric coolers; thermal compact models; thermal system; Cooling; Heating; Integrated circuit modeling; Materials; Semiconductor device modeling; Temperature sensors; Transient analysis; Active cooling; TEC control; cosimulation; hot spot; thermoelectric coolers (TECs); thermoelectric coolers (TECs).;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1063-8210

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TVLSI.2013.2278951

Filename

6595140