A Quantitative Model for the Thermocouple Effect Using Statistical and Quantum Mechanics.

This paper employs statistical and quantum mechanics to develop a model for the mechanism underlying the Seebeck effect. The conventional view of the equilibrium criterion for valence electrons in a material is that the Fermi Energy should be constant throughout the system. However, this criterion is an approximation and it is shown to be inadequate for thermocouple systems. An improved equilibrium criterion is developed by applying statistical and quantum mechanics to determine the total flow of electrons across an arbitrary boundary within a system. Dynamic equilibrium is then considered to be the situation where the Fermi Energy either side of the boundary is such that the flow of electrons in each direction is the same. This equilibrium criterion is then applied to the conditions along the thermocouple wires and at the junctions in order to generate a model for the Seebeck effect. The equations involved for calculating the electronic structure of a material cannot be solved analytically, so a solution is achieved using numeric models employing CASTEP code running on a Sun Beowulf cluster and iterative algorithms written in the Excel™ VBA language on a PC. The model is used to calculate the EMF versus temperature function for the gold versus platinum thermocouple, which is then compared with established experimental data. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]