Peltier Effect

Having discussed the Seebeck effect in the tutorial, its interesting to note that there also exists a similar effect when one applies a voltage to a coupling of two metals. The applied potential creates a temperature gradient between the metals, the reverse of the Seebeck effect. The equation governing the effect is:

dQ/dt = (pi_A - p_B)I

Where here dQ/dt is the "Peltier heat" absorbed per unit time, I is the current and pi-A, pi-B are the Peltier coefficients of each material. An interesting device which makes use of this effect is the Peltier cooler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling