0000000000372657
AUTHOR
Laurent Thiery
Recent improvements on micro-thermocouple based SThM
The scanning thermal microscope (SThM) has become a versatile tool for local surface temperature mapping or measuring thermal properties of solid materials. In this article, we present recent improvements in a SThM system, based on a micro-wire thermocouple probe associated with a quartz tuning fork for contact strength detection. Some results obtained on an electrothermal micro-hotplate device, operated in active and passive modes, allow demonstrating its performance as a coupled force detection and thermal measurement system.
Microfabricated high temperature sensing platform dedicated to scanning thermal microscopy (SThM)
Abstract The monitoring of heat flux is becoming more and more critical for many materials and structures approaching nanometric dimensions. Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM) is one of the tools available for thermal measurement at the nanoscale and requires calibration. Here we report on a micro-hotplate device made of a platinum heater suspended on thin silicon nitride (SiN) membranes integrating specific features for SThM calibration. These heated reference samples can include a localized resistive temperature sensors (RTD) or standalone platinum membranes (typically 10 × 10 μm2) on which the temperature can be measured precisely. This functional area is dedicated to (1) estimate the th…