Effect of the pulsed current of on-chip thermoelectric cooler on temperature response during thermal shock in localized cooling

On-chip thermoelectric cooling (TEC) emerges as a promising solution to address the issue of localized chip overheating, effectively mitigating thermal shock induced by local heat flow conduction and enhancing both reliability and performance of chips. In this study, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to investigate the effectiveness of on-chip thermoelectric cooler's pulse current in mitigating temperature fluctuations caused by thermal shock at hot spots. The influence of the magnitude and lag time of the pulse current on the temperature fluctuation of Si chip during thermal shock is analyzed. The calculation results show that the implementation of on-chip TEC can effectively mitigate the issue of localized temperature overheating caused by thermal shock. By adjusting the maximum and minimum current of the on-chip thermoelectric cooler, it is possible to mitigate the fluctuation amplitude of chip temperature induced by thermal shock at the hot spot. The findings also indicate that the lag time between input current and thermal shock can lead to an increase in the maximum temperature of the chip. In addition, experimental results using commercially thermoelectric cooler also show that when the input current of TEC is pulse current, the temperature fluctuation caused by thermal shock can be reduced better.