Integrated Sensors to Experimentally Measure Microheater Uniformity: Geometry Implications in Meander-Based Structures

Microheaters have evolved to become a key component of devices in a wide range of applications, many of which require a thermal profile with good uniformity. To this end, it is critical not only to select an appropriate device geometry but also to have reliable tools to assess the uniformity in the microscale. This paper presents a collection of novel sensors to experimentally extract the mean temperature in various regions of the micro-hotplate with high accuracy, offering an innovative alternative to other uniformity measurement tools that are often not available or not sufficiently precise. The studies are articulated around a series of meander-based microheaters, for which the temperature versus voltage profile, response time, power consumption and uniformity are studied. In this way, insight into the influence of different geometrical parameters (i.e. line arrangement, scaling, linewidth and line spacing) is provided. Finite Element Method simulations are performed based on certain assumptions and boundary conditions and exhibit strong concordance with our experimental data, thus we demonstrated that the sensors serve as a tool to validate the representativeness of a model.[2024-0110]