Micromachined Chip Scale Thermal Sensor for Thermal Imaging

作者：Shekhawat, Gajendra S.^*; Ramachandran, Srinivasan; Sharahi, Hossein Jiryaei; Sarkar, Souravi; Hujsak, Karl; Li, Yuan; Hagglund, Karl; Kim, Seonghwan; Aden, Gary; Chand, Ami^*; Dravid, Vinayak P.^*

来源：ACS Nano, 2018, 12(2): 1760-1767.

DOI：10.1021/acsnano.7b08504

• thermal imaging
• nanomechanical thermal sensor
• metallic nanostructures
• temperature mapping
• thermal conductivity mapping
• STHm
• VertiSense

The lateral resolution of scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) has hitherto never approached that of mainstream atomic force microscopy, mainly due to poor performance of the thermal sensor. Herein, we report a nanomechanical system-based thermal sensor (thermocouple) that enables high lateral resolution that is often required in nanoscale thermal characterization in a wide range of applications. This thermocouple-based probe technology delivers excellent lateral resolution (similar to 20 nm), extended high-temperature measurements > 700 degrees C without cantilever bending, and thermal sensitivity (similar to 0.04 degrees C). The origin of significantly improved figures-of-merit lies in the probe design that consists of a hollow silicon tip integrated with a vertically oriented thermocouple sensor at the apex (low thermal mass) which interacts with the sample through a metallic nanowire (50 nm diameter), thereby achieving high lateral resolution. The efficacy of this approach to SThM is demonstrated by imaging embedded metallic nanostructures in silica core-shell, metal nanostructures coated with polymer films, and metal-polymer interconnect structures. The nanoscale pitch and extremely small thermal mass of the probe promise significant improvements over existing methods and wide range of applications in several fields including semiconductor industry, biomedical imaging, and data storage.

• 出版日期2018-2
• 单位西北大学