CFD modeling of a thermoelectric device for electronics cooling applications

Increased power density in electronics systems is limiting the ability of air cooling to provide adequate cooling for the components in the systems. Thermoelectric cooling are solid state and highly reliable devices that can be used as either refrigeration or heat pump. The use of thermoelectric device for hot spot cooling has attracted significant research. Under specific conditions, a well-selected thermoelectric device can act as an enhancement for air cooling devices. A Thermoelectric device pumps heat from the cold to hot side, this direction is controlled by the voltage that is applied across the thermoelectric device. If the voltage is applied in opposite direction, the same thermoelectric cooler acts as a thermoelectric heater. In this paper, thermoelectric is used to study as a cooling device. A numerical test bench was set up in Icepaktrade. The power applied to thermoelectric, current supplied to thermoelectric and G factor were varied to find out the effect of each of these factors on the performance of the thermoelectric. The performance is evaluated by package temperature. In this study it was revealed that thermoelectric is not only used as a hot spot cooling solution but also can be used as a primary solution too. This study is mainly aimed for high end processors used in applications such as gaming.