LAUSR

Abstract This paper investigates the optimal design permitting to recover thermal heat released from electronic power components mounted on ceramic substrates. Accordingly, the methodology and the characterization of thick-film/LowTemperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC)-based multilayer thermo-electric micro-generators (TEGs) fabrication were detailed. Hence, two different TEGs, based on the Seebeck effect, with different thermocouples materials, Ag/Ni and Ag/PdAg, were fabricated, simulated, analytically studied and compared. Each designed generator contains 104 thermocouples, with 300 µm-width and space between them. The required heating was produced by a meander-shaped planar heater, simulating the presence of an electronic power device. As well, two heaters are compared, made by Ni and PdAg, and each one is tested in the absence/presence of cylindrical grooves added on the backside of the LTCC substrate. It has been shown that adding grooves around the hot element allows an average improvement of 160% of the temperature difference along the generator. Concerning TEGs, Ag/PdAg-based TEG was able to generate a higher output power of 81 μW for a temperature difference of 114 °C, than the Ag/Ni-based TEG with an output power of 4.6 µW at ΔT = 62 °C. The conversion efficiency was 0.5% and 0.08% for the Ag/PdAg-based and the Ag/Ni-based TEG, respectively.