University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation
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DESIGN, FABRICATION, AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A MICROMACHINED HEAT EXCHANGER PLATFORM FOR THERMOELECTRIC POWER GENERATION By SIVARAMAN MASILAMANI A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 © 2008 Sivaraman Masilamani 2 To my mother, Chitra Masilamani, and to the memory of my father, Masilamani Sambandhamoorthy 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to my advisor, Dr. David Arnold for the invaluable opportunities, career and personal advice, and for his compassion during the most difficult times. Without his endless patience, persistent motivation and continued appreciation for hard work, this research work would have not been possible. I also extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Toshikazu Nishida and Dr. David Hahn for serving on my thesis committee. I am also grateful to Army Research Laboratories for the financial support they provided for this research. I would like to cordially thank my project colleagues Israel Boniche, Christopher Meyer, and Eric Viale for their insight and assistance during the course of this research. Special thanks go to Ryan Durscher for his help with device modeling and for the many weekends he assisted me in the laboratory. Several other IMG-ers have been of genuine help to me during my graduate study. In particular, I would like to thank Janhavi Agashe, for her cheerful encouragement, academic and personal advice, Sheetal Shetye, for her friendly guidance and cleanroom help, Erin Patrick, for help with the microdispenser, Mingliang Wang and Yawei Li for their valuable microfabrication insights. I also acknowledge Al Ogden for his help with cleanroom equipment. I also owe special thanks to my undergraduate friends that lived with me in Bangalore, for their encouragement and support. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Masilamani Sambandhamoorthy and Chitra Masilamani, for their uncountable love and support all my life. The great human values, work ethics, and perseverance that they inculcated in me are the reasons behind everything that I achieve. I also thank my brother, Raghuraman Masilamani, for his care and affection. Last but not least, I thank my fiancée, Gayathri Devi Sridharan, for giving me the strength to face challenges; and for her fondness and love. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................................7 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................8 ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ...........................................................................12 1.1 Heat Exchangers............................................................................................................13 1.2 MEMS Heat Exchangers and Applications ..................................................................15 1.3 Thermoelectric Power Generation ................................................................................18 1.3.1 Seebeck Effect...................................................................................................19 1.3.2 Peltier Effect.....................................................................................................19 1.3.3 Thomson Effect.................................................................................................20 1.3.4 Thermoelectric Generator.................................................................................20 1.4 Microscale TE Generators.............................................................................................22 1.5 Research Goals..............................................................................................................25 1.6 Thesis Outline...............................................................................................................25 2 HEAT EXCHANGER DEVICE DESIGN AND MODELING.............................................27 2.1 Thermopile Material and Arrangement.........................................................................28 2.2 Structure of Thermoelectric Microgenerator ................................................................29 2.2.1 Simple in-Plane TEG Structure.........................................................................34 2.2.2 Out-of-Plane Flip-Chip Bonded Structure ........................................................35 2.2.3 Vertically Stacked Thermopile Structure..........................................................37 2.2.4 Vertically Stacked Radial In-plane Structure....................................................38 2.3 Device Design...............................................................................................................40 2.3.1 Fin Geometry Optimization ..............................................................................42 2.3.2 Exhaust Gas Channel Design............................................................................45 2.3.3 Ring Thickness and Space between Rings........................................................46 2.4 Thermal Modeling.........................................................................................................48 2.5 Final Dimensions of the Radial In-plane TE Modules..................................................52 2.6 Summary .......................................................................................................................52 3 FABRICATION AND STACKING OF THE HEAT EXCHANGER MODULES..............53 3.1 Through-Etching of Wafers ..........................................................................................53 3.2 Membrane Strength Evaluation.....................................................................................54 3.3 Process Flow Description..............................................................................................55 5 3.4 Mask Making................................................................................................................56 3.5 Stacking and Bonding of Heat Exchanger Unit Modules .............................................58 3.6 Final Device Photographs .............................................................................................61 3.7 Summary .......................................................................................................................61 4 CHARACTERIZATION OF THE HEAT EXCHANGER DEVICE....................................62 4.1 Experimental Setup and Procedure ...............................................................................62 4.1.1 Flow Measurements ..........................................................................................64 4.1.2 Temperature Measurements..............................................................................67 4.2 Test Matrix and Actual Test Results.............................................................................69 4.3 Comparison with Predicted Results ..............................................................................75 4.4 Limitations of the Experimental Setup .........................................................................77 4.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................78 5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK.............................................................................79 5.1 Conclusions...................................................................................................................79 5.2 Future Work ..................................................................................................................80 5.2.1 Eutectic Bonding of TE Modules......................................................................81 5.2.2 Integrated Temperature Measurement ..............................................................82 LIST OF REFERENCES...............................................................................................................85 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................89 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 1-1 Heat exchanger classification ............................................................................................14 3-1 Heat exchanger process flow .............................................................................................56 4-1 Flow velocity measurement procedure using the CTA......................................................66 4-2 Heat exchanger characterization matrix.............................................................................70 4-3 Temperatures measured during heat exchanger characterization ......................................70 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Common example of a heat exchanger..............................................................................13 1-2 Extended surface heat exchanger used in electronic cooling.............................................14 1-3 Different fin configurations ...............................................................................................15