Advantages and application of TEC controllers

Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junctions of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other, with consumption of electrical energy, being dependent on the direction of the current. Such an instrument is known as a Peltier device, a Peltier heat pump, solid state refrigerator, or thermoelectric cooler (TEC). It can be used either for heating or for cooling, although in practice the main application is cooling. It can be invoked as a temperature controller that either heats or cools.

The TEC5V4A-D is an electronic module designed for driving TECs (Thermo-Electric Coolers) with high stability in regulating the object temperature, extreme energy efficiency. 

The module provides interface components for users to configure the desired object temperature range, i.e. set-point temperature range; maximum voltage across TEC, i.e. maximum TEC voltage; and the compensation network. The compensation network compensates the astronomical order thermal load and thus stabilizes the temperature control loop.

The TEC5V4A-D comes with a high stability low noise 3.0V voltage references which can be utilized to setting the desired object temperature by using a POT (potentiometer) or a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter). When utilizing this reference for setting the set-point temperature, the set-point temperature error does not depend on this reference voltage.