Thermal response of an on-chip assembly of RTD heaters, sputtered sample and microthermocouples

In this paper, we report experimental methods to characterize the in situ thermal response of an on-chip assembly of resistance temperature detector (RTD) heaters, sputtered sample and microthermocouples (MTs). The operating relationships of the heater and microthermocouple are reported. While temperature measurements were made using external thermocouples, we quantitatively determined their influence on the operating relationships to be quite small. A one-dimensional steady state heat transfer model was developed for a sputtered sample, heated by a constant-temperature heat source (the RTD heater) at one end. The heat transfer from the sample to the environment and the substrate was “lumped” in a heat transfer coefficient. Despite the simplicity of the model, the approach predicted the temperature at the far end of the sample surprisingly well. The heat transfer coefficient was determined for various sample lengths, and was found to decay exponentially with an increase in the length of the sample.