MEMS Device Being Developed for Active Cooling and Temperature Control

High-capacity cooling options remain limited for many small-scale applications such as microelectronic components, miniature sensors, and microsystems. A microelectromechanical system (MEMS) is currently under development at the NASA Glenn Research Center to meet this need. It uses a thermodynamic cycle to provide cooling or heating directly to a thermally loaded surface. The device can be used strictly in the cooling mode, or it can be switched between cooling and heating modes in milliseconds for precise temperature control. Fabrication and assembly are accomplished by wet etching and wafer bonding techniques routinely used in the semiconductor processing industry. Benefits of the MEMS cooler include scalability to fractions of a millimeter, modularity for increased capacity and staging to low temperatures, simple interfaces and limited failure modes, and minimal induced vibration.