A New Approach to Interconversion of Thermal and Electrical Energy

New approaches to thermal management of electronic components are of general interest. Our work demonstrates a novel solution for this applications area. Highly effective thermal management solutions can potentially help the semiconductor manufacturers to reduce costs and meet some milestones of the silicon roadmap. For example, enormous amount of Joule heating and inability of the state-of-the art coolers to cope with it forces manufacturers to switch to dual-core architectures of processors. Also, our work might inspire a number of blue skies research projects in this particular field because it points to a relatively new approach broadens the scope of applications for ferroelectrics. We have observed large cooling (electrocaloric) effects in thin films under the application of a small electrical voltage. This effect could also be used in reverse to turn low grade waste heat into electricity (pyroelectric energy conversion). In other words, we suggest a way to interconvert thermal end electrical energy