Nanoscale Thermoelectric Peltier cooling in Graphene

Thermoelectric peltier cooling effects at graphene and metal junctions have been demonstrated by a group out of the University of Illinois. Kyle Grosse, Feifei Lian, Myung-Ho Bae,William King, and Eric Pop used “… atomic force microscopy to measure the temperature distributions at the contacts of working graphene transistors”:

Our data indicate that thermoelectric effects account for up to one-third of the contact temperature changes, and that current crowding accounts for most of the remainder. Modeling predicts that the role of current crowding will diminish and the role of thermoelectric effects will increase as contacts improve. [ Nature (abstract) ]

Thin film graphene is already showing the way forward in terms of both spin computing (via spintronic effects) and flexible graphene memristors (last years crosspoint array interconnects with graphene-oxide memory cells). Flexible, self-cooling, low power… kudos. This is one model to cross your fingers for.