Passivation and performance analysis of thin film Peltier heat pumps

Abstract
SiO 2 passivation of thin film Au–Bi2Te3 based Peltier devices was investigated. SiO2 deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at 350 °C was found to adversely affect the Au–Bi2Te3 devices, while SiO2 thin films deposited in a reactive asymmetric bipolar pulsed dc sputtering process passivated the Au–Bi2Te3 devices with minimal change in device resistivity. Replacing the chrome adhesion film with a Mo–W film to adhere the gold metal to SiO2 was found to further optimize the performance of the thin film Peltier device. Thermal modeling showed that two-arm Au–Bi2Te3 based Peltier devices are realistically capable of a maximum temperature differential of approximately 18 °C, with a thermal response time close to 2 ms/°C.