The effectiveness of the bonding layer to attain reliable thermoelectric structures

Abstract

The reliable interface plays a significant role in improving the performance of thermoelectric devices. Due to the interface stability, thermoelectric interfacial layers are prone to multilayer and elastic thick layers. This paper develops a new theoretical model to investigate how an elastic bonding layer affects the behaviors of thermoelectric structures. The governing integral and integro-differential equation involving thermoelectric effects are obtained for the cases without and with the bonding layer and solved by collocation methods numerically. The results demonstrate that the geometric and material parameters, the total electric current, and the total energy flux have significant effects on the interfacial shear stress and normal stress. The interfacial stress concentration degradation can appear because the interface is introduced by a larger thick bonding layer. The proposed model can explain the experimental properties qualitatively, and provide theoretical guidance for designing thermoelectric structures.