Laser Processing of Thermoelectrics for Medical Devices

Thermoelectrics are employed in a variety of important applications. In medical applications, thermal cycler equipment is critical in DNA analyses via precise and rapid temperature ramping of polymerase chain reactions. Most recently this technology has been the “gold standard” in COVID-19 testing. Nevertheless, current thermoelectric device manufacturing requires expensive, extensive and serial assembly that offers limited flexibility in device design and new applications. Additive manufacturing can overcome these challenges. We have teamed with II-VI Marlow, the largest thermoelectrics manufacture in the USA, and will present our most recent work that demonstrates our advances in employing selective laser melting (laser powder bed fusion) to thermoelectrics in enabling new geometries and architectures, nano- to meso-scale structuring, and material-to-device integration. Furthermore, we will present characterization results of the microstructure and key thermoelectric properties as a function of temperature, and demonstrate the impact novel geometries can have on thermoelectric device performance using multiphysics modeling.