Roman Iulian 4531 B 15/10/2013

The Thermoelectric Effect

Principle
The thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice-versa. The effects are important in the construction of temperature sensors or systems with thermoelectric cooling. The term "thermoelectric effect" encompasses three separately identified effects: the Seebeck effect, Peltier effect, and Thomson effect. Textbooks may refer to it as the Peltier Seebeck effect. The thermoelectric cooler is a semiconductor device which uses the Peltier effect. The functioning method of Peltier device is similar to that of a refrigerator. The difference lies in the fact that that refrigerator works by using an decompression of a gas and here the working fluid is made of electrons and holes which contract the same way a gas does. When a current is made to flow through a
junction between two conductors A and B, heat may be generated (or removed) at the junction. A typical Peltier heat pump device involves multiple junctions in series, through which a current is driven. Some of the junctions lose heat due to the Peltier effect, while others gain heat. Thermoelectric heat pumps exploit this phenomenon, as do thermoelectric cooling devices found in refrigerators

Where the temperature gradient

is the Peltier coeficent ,

is the Seebeck coeficent and T is the

absolute temperature of that zone.If the current I flows along an constant conductor on the direction of the formula will be:

where t is the Thomson coefficient. The direction of the transfer depends on the sign if the Thomson coefficient.

Experimental device Table