Design and Implementation of a Micro Thermoelectric Cooler

There are TWO speakers for this seminar. Andrew Gross and Shahzrad Naraghi
Many MEMs devices such as resonators, gyroscopes and infrared imagers benefit from enhanced performance characteristics when operated 50 °~C or more below room temperature. One approach to developing a cooler for these MEMS applications is to make use of the Peltier effect. This offers an attractive option because it allows for the fabrication of a very compact, low- power, solid-state device. This talk will present the development of such a Peltier cooler, which has so far produced temperature differentials of up to 16 °~C. The presentation will cover modeling, simulation, design considerations, and fabrication, as well as a discussion of how to push the technology past its current state to achieve temperature differentials of greater than 50 °~C.
Andrew Gross was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1982. In
December of 2004, he graduated summa cum laude from the Michigan Technological University with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering. As an undergraduate, Andrew participated in the Integrated Microsystems Enterprise where he worked on a sensor platform for educational applications. During this time, also interned with IBM at their fabrication facility in East Fishkill, NY. Following graduation, he interned with Motorola in Deer Park, IL, where he worked on an inertial sensing module. He began his M.S./Ph.D. programs at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2005, and completed his masters in the spring of 2007. His current research focuses on the development of a micro thermoelectric cooler.