Impact of heat guide structure on the power generation performance of integrated cavity-free micro thermoelectric generators

The performance of a cavity-free micro thermoelectric generator (TEG) consists of Si nanowires (Si-NWs) has been investigated in this research. In the cavity free structure, one side of TEG is heated by the structure of metal overlayer, called Heat Guide (HG), to supply heat selectively to specific microregions within the device. Thus, heat energy flows in the perpendicular direction which forms steep temperature gradient in the NWs. However, the performance can be varied with the various thickness of HG. In this work, the impact of HG structure of an integrated TEG was experimentally demonstrated on the power generation performance. Higher metal HG thickness and thick interlayer dielectric (ILD) thickness exhibit higher power generation performance with the integrated device.