摘要 |
Disclosed herein are methods for monitoring a thermoelectric heating and cooling device (103, 203, 303) of a system (100, 200, 300) for cycling liquid reaction mixtures through a series of temperature excursions, and such systems adapted to perform these methods. A first quantity being either an electric current or an electric voltage is applied to the heating and cooling device (103, 203) or a portion (314) thereof (303), and a second quantity being either the non-selected first quantity or temperature is measured to obtain a first test value. The selected first quantity is applied to another thermoelectric heating and cooling device (104, 204) or another portion (315) of the first device (303), and the second quantity is measured to obtain a second test value. Comparison of the first and second test values yields a monitoring value which is compared with a pre-defined threshold value to obtain a monitoring result. |