Modeling and analysis of nanotips for thermoelectric coolers

Thermoelectric cooling system can be used in many applications. The properties of structured point contact at the cold end affect the performance of thermoelectric cooling. The performance of metal point junctions as a function of tip radius show that the smaller the tip radius, the better the figure of merit This paper presents the modeling and analysis of the nanotips. Each nanotip will have to carry some fraction of the weight of the thermoelectric material and the silicon slabs. The small apical area of each nanotip causes a very high pressure build up. The device may be loaded externally to ensure proper nanotip and thermoelectric material contact. A deformation of approximately 10 to 15 nm would be ideal. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) needed to be applied to determine how tall each nanotip must be to maximize soft and hard tip contacts. FEA was also needed to approximate the amount of external loading that will be necessary. ANSYS software was used in the modeling and analysis of the nanotips.