Semiconductors are Cool

One of the problems with electronic circuitry is what to do with heat dissipation. One attempt to deal with this would be to improve the thermoelectrical properties of the intrinsic circuitry material and use the material to make coolers for on-site chilling. The conventional typical thermoelectric materials, such as Bi2Te3, do not fit easily with the common integrated circuit semiconductors----Si, GaAs, and InP---because of a mismatch of the atomic spacing. Now, a group of scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with a colleague at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has tried to solve the problem by making coolers using the GaAs-based material itself. With this approach they have been able to bring about cooling of 0.8 degrees at a temperature of 25 C and 2 degrees at a temperature of 100 C. (Zhang et al., Applied Physics Letters, 14 July 2003; contact Jizhi Zhang, 413-545-0712.