Study on the Heat Source and Heat Sink for Micro Thermoelectric Generator Device

The max power per mass/volume of micro (mini) thermoelectric is related not only to the internal efficiency of thermoelectric generator but also to heat source and heat sink of the device. In this paper, high caloric value liquid fuel and high energy store PCM fuels were used as heat source while low phase transition temperature PCM as heat sink, and thermoelectric device was designed for test. Furthermore, the analysis of related data was conducted by experiments, and the merit and status in quo of using Radioisotope in thermoelectric device was analyzed, which shows that it is useful to make thermoelectric device from mini to micro. The experimental results show that adding heat sink is helpful to reduce the volume and improve the output power of the device.