An automatic thermal cycling based test platform for thermoelectric generator testing

Thermoelectric (TE) modules are solid-state devices that convert directly thermal energy in electrical energy. However, they can undergo performance degradation due to thermal cycling. In the present study, a control-based test platform that is capable to apply specific thermal cycling pattern at periodic intervals is presented in order to evaluate performance degradation that influence the TE module lifetime. Using this test platform, some parameters and the figure of merit ZT of a commercial TE module are measured before and after thermal cycling application. An important feature of the proposed platform is that the applied thermal cycling is bipolar, that is, it is possible to apply positive or negative temperature difference and, through this, performance degradation would be observed after only 548 thermal cycles much lower than previous works.