20 May 2015

Ph 101

E.S. Phinney & G. Refael

Order of Magnitude Physics

Problem Set 8

Due at the start of class Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Homework Problems:
1. Thermoelectricity. As we discussed in class, in metals and semiconductors, conduction
band electrons carry both heat and electric current. In our first discussions, we assumed that
the heat transport occurred without any net electron current, and the electrical conductivity
we calculated assuming that the material had no temperature gradients (i.e., no thermally
driven net electron flow).
In one dimension, the electric field E and heat flux F are related to the electric current j and
temperature gradient T by


  
E
j

S
(1)
=
T
K
F
where = 1/ and K are respectively the familiar electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity, and S and are called the Seebeck and Peltier coefficients. One of Onsagers1 famous
reciprocal relations of non-equilibrium thermodynamics requires that = T S for materials
with time-reversal symmetry (i.e. not magnetic).
a) Show that equation (1) can be inverted to give
dV
dT
(K + S)
dx
dx
dT
dV
j = S

,
dx
dx

F =

and

(2)
(3)

where we defined the one dimension to be the x direction, and so wrote T = dT /dx,
wrote the electric field as the gradient of the electrical potential, E = dV /dx, and used
the fact that the electrical conductivity = 1/.
b) Show that for a wire of cross-sectional area A and length l, equation (1) can be rewritten
as

 


V
R
S
I
=
(4)
T
RT1
Q
where V is the voltage difference between the ends of the wire, Q the heat flow (units
of Watts), R the electrical resistance of the wire, RT the thermal resistance of the wire
(units of Kelvin per Watt), I the current in the wire, and T the temperature difference
betweeen the two ends of the wire. Also show that T S and have units of volts.
1

Lars Onsager is an inspiration to bad teachers and difficult grad students everywhere. The spectacular awfulness
of his chemistry lectures led to his being fired by both Johns Hopkins (after 6 months) and Brown (after 3 years)
universities. Yale took him on, but soon discovered he had never completed his PhD in Norway. He quickly generated
some additional material for a thesis, but none of the chemistry or physics faculty could understand it. He was saved
from being fired for a third time by the Yale math department, which offered to give him a PhD on the spot.
He remained at Yale, and received the 1968 Nobel prize in chemistry for his theoretical work on nonequilibrium
thermodynamics. He was actually nominated for his solution of the 2-d Ising model, but was instead given the prize
for the work which had not been deemed sufficient for a PhD thesis.

c) The Seebeck coefficient relates a voltage difference V with a temperature difference

T . The origin of this could be traced to my favorite thermodynamic relation the
Gibbs-Duhem relation:
d = sdT + vdp ,
where s is the entropy per particle, v the specific volume, p pressure, T temperature,
and = qV is the chemical potential. Replacing the differential operator with gradients,
and neglecting the pressure differential gives a good estimate for the Seebeck coefficient.
Comparing our Gibbs-Duhem relation qV = sT to equation 3 with j = 0, i.e.,
dV /dx = SdT /dx, implies
s
S=
(5)
q
with q the charge of the particles at hand, and S the Seebeck coefficient. Roughly
speaking, this effect is due to charged particles diffusing from hot to cold to transfer
heat; if they are charged, they also carry a current in the process.
Estimate the Seebeck coefficient at room temperature for a typical n-type semiconductor.
In an n-type, electron-doped, semiconductor, the valence band is inert, but a conduction
band has a very small density nc of conduction electrons. Assume the doped electron
density (which is also the effective carrier density) is nc = 1022 m3 and the effective
mass of the electron is m me with me the bare (vacuum) electron mass. Assuming
the electrons can be treated as an ideal gas, estimate S.
d) Consider a semiconductor which is p-type (i.e., hole doped). Namely, its conduction
band is inert, but a small density of holes exist in the valence band. What is the S in
this case for the same parameters as above (i.e. the hole density nh = 1022 m3 , and
their effective mass is me , room temperature)?
e) Metals have a suppressed Seebeck coefficient. Consider a metal with Fermi-energy of
F = 5eV; estimate the Seebeck coefficient assuming that the electrons have a simple
form for their kinetic energy, Ek = p2 /2me .
f) A thermocouple determines temperature differences by measuring the voltage across
a capacitor gap. It is made as shown in figure 1. Assume that both plates of the
capacitor are at the same (room) temperature. Since the capacitor gap and voltmeter
have effectively infinite resistance, we may take the current in thermocouple to be zero.
By integrating equation (3) with j = 0 from the negative plate of the capacitor to the
reference cold bath through metal B, then through metal A from the cold end to the hot
end, and finally through metal B from the hot end to the positive plate of the capacitor,
show that for temperature-independent Seebeck coefficients SA and SB ,
V2 V1 = (SB SA )(TH Tc ) .

(6)

If only a single metal is used in the thermocouple, SA = SB and V2 V1 = 0 for

all temperature differences, so such a thermocouple would be useless. Therefore two
different metals or metal alloys are used, e.g. copper/constan (a Ni-Copper alloy) or
Platinum/platinum-rhodium.
g) Estimate the change in V2 V1 , in volts, as TH changes from 0 C to 100 C, for a typical
metal/metal thermocouple.
h) Explain what slight modification of the thermocouple would be required to turn it into
a device (a thermopile) to generate electrical power from temperature differences. These

Figure 1: Schematic of a thermocouple. The measured voltage V1 V2 is a function of the temperature difference TH TC and the difference of the Peltier of the metals A and B used to make
the thermocouple.
are used to generate power from the hot plutonium 238 in the Voyager spacecrafts
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). Show that the fraction of the heat
flux converted to electrical power depends on the difference of the dimensionless figure
of merit
S 2 T
2
S
M=
=
=
(7)
K
KT
K
between the two materials used. So far no one has found materials capable of getting
this above a few percent. If you do, you could make mechanical refrigerator compressors
obsolete, and become fabulously wealthy on the patent royalties.
2. Solar sailing. A circular sail composed of aluminum foil is attached to a spacecraft of equal
mass in a manner similar to a parachute (i.e. the spacecraft hangs near the center of the sail
on the sunward side, suspended by threads which extend from the circumference of the sail).
a) The solar wind is mostly ionized hydrogen, and has a mean velocity vw 500km s1
and a mean proton density at distance a from the sun of np 10cm3 (1AU/a)2 (the
solar corona which supplies the wind is very stormy, so the wind velocity varies with
time and position by 200km s1 and the density by factors of 3, so the mean numbers
are just rough guides). Which dominates the pressure on the solar sail: the ram pressure
of the solar plasma wind, or the solar radiation pressure?
b) What is the maximum thickness of the aluminum foil which would permit sailing in a
purely radial direction away from the Sun?
c) What is the maximum diameter that a solar sail composed of a single sheet of aluminum
can have, if it is to avoid tearing? Consider the system with the maximum sail thickness
calculated in part (a).
d) Consider a solar sail with surface mass density2 of 3g m2 , with an equal mass spacecraft
attached. Assuming the orientation of the sail, which we can take as a perfect mirror,
2

The value given is the surface mass density of the Planetary Societys LightSail, launched on Wednesday May
20, 2015. The sail is scheduled to deploy on June 17, 2015. Youll then have a couple of days to look for it at night,
before atmospheric drag in low earth orbit causes it to re-enter.

could be controlled, estimate the time it would take for such a sail to travel from Earth
to Jupiter (at 5AU)? How about the time to go to Venus (0.7AU)? And how would you
orient the sail to make these trips?
3. Mystery fire. The attached newspaper clipping describes the cause of a seemingly mysterious fire. Chairs are complicated, with coverings, foam, wood arms, etc. So for simplicity just
assume that the light was falling on solid wood.
a) Estimate by what factor the sunlight would have to have been concentrated to start the
fire.
b) Shaving and makeup mirrors like the one that started the fire are designed to produce
magnified images of the face when viewed from across a sink or table. Estimate the
likely focal length of the mirror, and discuss how precisely it would have to be placed to
start a fire on the chair.
Similar fires have been started in stores by sunlight focussed by bottles, e.g. http:
//www.livescience.com/24608-vodka-sunlight-fire.html.
c) Estimate how long would it take to ignite the wood.
4. Heating CPUs [a former student problem] One factor limiting computer chip speeds is the
waste heat they produce. The more computations per second a chip performs, the more heat
it produces and the greater the danger of electronic failure. A chip is a collection of transistors
and connecting wires. Functionally, a transistor is an on/off switch. Turning the transistor
on means charging it up it takes energy to charge it up, just as it takes energy to charge
up a capacitor. The faster the CPU speed, the more capacitors are being charged up per
unit time (the faster the charges are being shuttled around the chip). Chip manufacturers
are constantly finding new ways to shrink transistors to cram more of them onto a given size
chip (Moores Law). Current Intel CPUs have transistors measuring 20 30 nm across.
a) Using the transistor size a, estimate the waste-heat power output of a modern CPU the
size of your fingernail. Express in Watts. Hint: in cgs, capacitance has very nice units.
b) The chip heats the air inside the computer casing. A cooling fan is used to flush the
hot air out. Use your answer in (a) to estimate how much hotter the air gets inside the
computer, in steady state. Express the change in air temperature, T , in K. Alternatively, estimate a reasonable T and decide what volume of air per second the fan in
your computer has to move out of the computer case to prevent overheating of the cpu
(if the latter is running full bore, e.g. running multi-threaded code on all cores, that fills
the whole cache).