Thermal matching designed CMOS mems-based thermoelectric generator for naturally cooling condition

This paper presents a CMOS MEMS-based thermoelectric energy generator device (TEG) used under natural cooling condition with a high output performance. A thermal matching principle is employed for the TEG chip designing and packaging, in which the thermal resistance of the poly-silicon thermopile is approximate to the external thermal load in the system. A wearable device embedded with the TEG chip has been tested in-door when the cold side is naturally cooled by ambient air. The measured results show an open-circuit voltage of as high as 1.6 V and an output power of 0.49 μW when the temperature of the heat source is at 35°C, which makes it to be an applicable wearable TEG device for body warmth converting fabricated by CMOS MEMS-based technology.