Decoupled cantilever arms for highly versatile and sensitive temperature and heat flux measurements
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Author(s)
Burg, Brian R.
Tong, Jonathan K.
Hsu, Wei-Chun
Chen, Gang
Date Issued
October 2012
Journal
Review of Scientific Instruments
Publisher
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Citation
Burg, Brian R., Jonathan K. Tong, Wei-Chun Hsu, and Gang Chen. “Decoupled Cantilever Arms for Highly Versatile and Sensitive Temperature and Heat Flux Measurements.” Review of Scientific Instruments 83, no. 10 (2012): 104902.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Microfabricated cantilever beams have been used in microelectromechanical systems for a variety of sensor and actuator applications. Bimorph cantilevers accurately measure temperature change and heat flux with resolutions several orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional sensors such as thermocouples, semiconductor diodes, as well as resistance and infrared thermometers. The use of traditional cantilevers, however, entails a series of important measurement limitations, because their interactions with the sample and surroundings often create parasitic deflection forces and the typical metal layer degrades the thermal sensitivity of the cantilever. The paper introduces a design to address these issues by decoupling the sample and detector section of the cantilever, along with a thermomechanical model, the fabrication, system integration, and characterization. The custom-designed bi-arm cantilever is over one order of magnitude more sensitive than current commercial cantilevers due to the significantly reduced thermal conductance of the cantilever sample arm. The rigid and immobile sample section offers measurement versatility ranging from photothermal absorption, near-field thermal radiation down to contact, conduction, and material thermal characterization measurements in nearly identical configurations.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4758093
