High Performance Low Cost TEC Modules

TEC, Thermo-Electric Cooler, can generate both heating and cooling power by input electric DC current. When the current flows in one direction, one of the thermo-electric cooler plates generates heat while the other generates “cold”. As the current reverses the direction, the TEC plates will reverse their relative relationship in temperature.  

TEC modules are the essential components for keeping the laser chips working at a constant temperature, thus, the lasers will have constant output wavelength, power and less or no mode hopping. 

This are the general suggestions for choosing the TEC modules and designing the TEC based thermal systems:

1. Try your best to minimize the thermal resistance between the TEC module plates and the thermal heat-sink on the hot side and the thermal load on the cold side.
2. The best way to connect the TEC modules’ plates to the heat-sink or the thermal load is by metalizing the TEC modules’ plates and soldering the metalized surface directly onto the heat-sink surface and/or the thermal load surface.
3. Try your best to design the system with smaller maximum temperature difference between the 2 plates (hot side and the cold side) of the TEC modules, so that the thermal efficiency of the system will be high. It would be the best not to require the maximum temperature difference be > 30 C.
4. When the required maximum temperature difference is small, such as < 30 C, use large TEC modules to drive small thermal load which will result in high thermal efficiency.
5. The thermal efficiency of the TEC modules is usually measured by COP: Coefficient of Performance. It is defined as the ratio:
   (Thermal output power)/(Electrical input power).
   A well designed system can achieve the COP to be > 2.  

We offer a wide variety of high quality TEC Modules at low prices. Many of them work well with our TEC controllers and Thermistors.