AC Electrothermal Characterization of Doped-Si Heated Microcantilevers Using Frequency-Domain Finite Element Analysis

K. Park[1], S. Hamian[1], A. M. Gauffreau[2], T. Walsh[2]
[1]Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
[2]Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
Published in 2014

This work investigates the frequency-dependent electrothermal behaviors of freestanding doped-silicon heated microcantilever probes operating under the periodic (ac) Joule heating. The transient heat conduction equation for each component (i.e., the low-doped heater region, the high-doped constriction region, and the high-doped leg region) is solved using the general heat transfer module for DC component. To include the AC current harmonics and the periodic heating operation, the joule-heating interface under the electrothermal interaction on COMSOL Multiphysics® software is used. The results demonstrate that the high frequency behavior of the cantilever is closely related to thermal diffusion restricted in the heater region.

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