Low-power printed micro-hotplates through aerosol jetting of gold on thin polyimide membranes

We report on patterning of miniaturized gold (Au) based micro-hotplates reaching high temperature at lower power consumption than ever reported using aerosol jet printing. Efficient heating (i.e. ~12 °C/mW) was achieved by reducing the effective heating area and the thickness of the polyimide substrate. Au nanoparticles solution was used for printing heaters of two different sizes, i.e. 500 × 500 μm2 and 150 × 150 μm2. These double meander heaters were patterned on a 50 μm-thick polyimide substrate implementing 5 μm-thick membranes using laser etching. Finite element simulations were used to optimize the thermal design of the devices. They exhibit a power consumption at 250 °C of 39 mW and 22 mW for the larger and smaller heater design, respectively. These results indorse the significance of aerosol jet printing process at high resolution to realize high temperature and power efficient micro-hotplates on foil for applications such as; in portable gas and chemical sensors, thermal metrology and mapping, localized heating, thermal actuators and microfluidics etc.