Evaluation of Internal Resistance and Power Loss in Micro Thermoelectric Generators (µTEGs)

S. Seif[1], K. Cadien[1]
[1]Department of Chemical & Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Published in 2013

One of the major challenges in designing µTEGs is to minimize power loss due to internal resistance (r) of Thermoelectric (TE) materials. To solve this problem we have performed simulation analysis and calculated the internal resistance of eight different TE materials. The internal resistances of these TE materials were then compared to the power generated across the copper electrode as seen in Figure 1. These results showed that the best TE materials to be used for the fabrication of µTEGs are the n-type and p-type SiGe; because, they have low internal resistances and produced more powers across copper electrode as compared to other TE materials used in this simulation analysis.

Download