Development of an Advanced Thermoelectric Cooling System for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs)

New thermoelectric materials with improved figure of merit, Z, are emerging from research laboratories and are soon to be available for applications. The need to conserve energy on UUVs points to the use of the new thermoelectric technology to moreefficiently cool critical electrical components. This is an excellent initial cooling application for Hi-Z's multi-layer quantum well (MLQW) thermoelectrics. Hi-Z has already demonstrated representative small-scale couples of MLQW as thermoelectricgenerators and one of the MLQW materials as a Peltier cooling device.The proposed work will develop designs for practical cooling modules from these MLQW materials that can now be engineered. The development effort will include the electrical, thermal and mechanical means to combine the MLQW films into larger-scale devices.Particular needs of the U S Navy UUVs will be reviewed and application-specific cooling modules will be proposed for the cooling of critical electrical components. Performance predictions can be made based on the material data taken from Hi-Z'sexperimental work on the DARPA/ONR programs. From this is appears that the efficiency of the cooling function, as measured by COP, can be increased to as much as 4.0 to 6.0.Radm. Michael Sharp, program executive officer for mine and undersea warfare, has been quoted wanting to see