SiGe (GaP) material to crack. The development of these compliant pads started in 1984 and the compliancy performance of refractory metal fibers has been analytically modeled and experimentally verified. The difficulty has been and continues to be fabricating solid niobium and/or tungsten face sheets that are bonded to the fibers. The analyses and experiments have resulted in selecting niobium fibers bonded to a niobium face sheet on one side and a tungsten face sheet on the other side. The niobium face sheet matches the thermal expansion of both the heat source material which is NblZr-Type C and the heat sink material which is NblZr-Type A. The tungsten face sheet thermal expansion matches the thermoelectric SiGe (Ga) material. To date, compliant pads have been fabricated and tested with niobium fibers and niobium face sheets on both sides. The present development effort is focused on fabricating the compliant pads with niobium face sheets on one side and tungsten face sheets on the other. The other key development for the TE cell is the electrical insulator. The insulator
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==