Thin film evaporation effect on heat transport capability in a grooved heat pipe

A theoretical model predicting the heat transfer performance occurring in a grooved heat pipe is developed. The model includes the effects of groove geometry, thin film evaporation, contact angle, and film condensation. The numerical results show that the groove geometry significantly affects the thin film evaporation and condensation. The thin film evaporation plays a key role in the total effective thermal conductivity and determines a limit for the maximum amount of heat transport through the micro regions for a given evaporator geometry. While the contact angle can influence the capillary limitation, it significantly affects the thin film evaporation and the total effective thermal conductivity of a groove heat pipe. In order to verify the theoretical analysis, an experimental investigation on a grooved heat pipe was conducted. The current investigation will result in a better understanding of thin film evaporation and its effect on the maximum heat transport in a grooved heat pipe.     

基于有限元模拟的薄膜热流计结构设计及优化

精确的热流测量对航空航天领域发动机设计及使用过程至关重要.薄膜热流计以其体积小、热容量小、干扰小、不破坏部件表面气流等显著优势,成为发动机热端部件表面热流测量的新方法.针对传统工程经验设计薄膜热流计精确度不高且迭代耗时长的缺点,基于有限元仿真模拟方法,建立了一种薄膜热流计有限元分析模型,综合分析了热流密度、热阻层厚度、热电堆厚度等因素对热流计冷热结点温度梯度的影响,提出薄膜热流计优化思路.分析结果表明,优化后的薄膜热流计具有更出色的热学性能与电学性能.     

Real time thickness measurement of thin film for end-point detector (EPD) of 12-inch spin etcher using the white light interferometry

A real time thickness measurement method based on the wide band white light interferometry for spin etcher is presented for the silicon-oxide and poly-silicon film deposited on 12-inch silicon wafer subject to a rotational vibration and chemical flow. Mathematical model for the vibration and chemical flow is described using a statistical method and analyzed to investigate their effects on the interference of reflected lights from the thin films. A white light interferometry system for the real time thickness measurement of thin films have been also developed to evaluate the performance of the method in experiment and determine the thickness of the films using signal processing techniques including curve-fitting and adaptive filtering. Experiments conducted for thin films ranging form 100 nm to 600 nm in thickness show that the method proposed in the paper is proved to be effective with a good accuracy of maximum 1.8% error.     

A simple method for the characterization of thin films during heat treatment

 In this paper, we propose a simple method to characterize thin film during heat treatment with a compact structure as a specimen. By detecting the variation of displacements of the structure, thereby, various kinds of information, such as thermomechanical properties, stress relieving, or microstructure variations of thin films during heat treatment, can be characterized from the record of the displacements of the structure. The measurement of displacements can be done directly under an optical microscope with the specimen placed in a heating stage. Based on this method, the specimen is free from substrate, no mechanical constraints imposed on the specimen, and the characterization can display local conditions on a wafer. To set an example, as-deposited polycrystalline silicon films with phosphorous doping on regular high temperature annealing between 550 and 1100 °C are used as a model system to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for characterizing variations of stress-levels as function of temperature and time during heat treatment. Received: 30 May 2001/Accepted: 29 August 2001     

Elastic–plastic modeling of heat-treated bimorph micro-cantilevers

This paper models the residual stress distributions within micro-fabricated bimorph cantilevers of varying thickness. A contact model is introduced to calculate the influence of contact on the residual stress following a heat treatment process. An analytical modeling approach is adopted to characterize bimorph cantilevers composed of thin Au films deposited on thick poly-silicon or silicon-dioxide beams. A thermal elastic–plastic finite element model (FEM) is utilized to calculate the residual stress distribution across the cantilever cross-section and to determine the beam tip deflection following heat treatment. The influences of the beam material and thickness on the residual stress distribution and tip deflections are thoroughly investigated. The numerical results indicate that a larger beam thickness leads to a greater residual stress difference at the interface between the beam and the film. The residual stress established in the poly-silicon cantilever is greater than that induced in the silicon-dioxide cantilever. The results confirm the ability of the developed thermal elastic–plastic finite element contact model to predict the residual stress distributions within micro-fabricated cantilever structures with high accuracy. As such, the proposed model makes a valuable contribution to the development of micro-cantilevers for sensor and actuator applications.

     

Rapid thermal annealing of polysilicon thin films

In comparison with conventional heat treatment, high-temperature rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in a radio frequency (RF) induction-heated system can reduce or eliminate residual stresses in thin films in a few seconds. In this work, changes in the stress level due to the RTA of polycrystalline silicon thin films were studied as a function of annealing time and temperature. The corresponding variations in the microstructure and surface layer of the thin films were experimentally investigated by a variety of analytical tools. The results suggest that the residual stress evolution during annealing is dominated by two mechanisms: 1) microstructure variations of the polysilicon thin film and 2) effects of a surface layer formed during the heat treatment. The fact that the microstructure changes are more pronounced in samples after conventional heat treatment implies that the effects of the formed surface layer may dominate the final state of the residual stress in the thin film     

Simulation of thin film thickness distribution for thermal evaporation process using a scanning linear source

Thermal evaporation process is the main process involved in the production of OLED displays and with the trends toward larger substrate size and display resolution, film thickness uniformity must be carefully controlled in order to implement exact pixel data. To secure stable film thickness uniformity on the substrate area, thin films are deposited on large‐area glass substrates via thermal evaporation process using a linear source. We designed a linear source and mathematical model was developed to describe the system with a focus on the linear source. Then, system parameters were determined to guarantee uniform thickness using computer‐based simulation, replacing wasteful actual experiments, followed by carrying out experiments based on the determined parameters. After the deposition process, data from the mathematical model and experiments was compared and the resulting agreement was good, verifying the validity of the proposed method. Consequently, by applying the proposed method, display manufacturing process related to thermal evaporation can be controlled within a tight tolerance in order to maximize the production yield rate.     

Measurement technique for the thermal properties of thin-film diaphragms embedded in calorimetric flow sensors

In diaphragm-based micromachined calorimetric flow sensors, convective heat transfer through the test fluid competes with the spurious heat shunt induced by the thin-film diaphragm where heating and temperature sensing elements are embedded. Consequently, accurate knowledge of thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and emissivity of the diaphragm is mandatory for design, simulation, optimization, and characterization of such devices. However, these parameters can differ considerably from those stated for bulk material and they typically depend on the production process. We developed a novel technique to extract the thermal thin-film properties directly from measurements carried out on calorimetric flow sensors. Here, the heat transfer frequency response from the heater to the spatially separated temperature sensors is measured and compared to a theoretically obtained relationship arising from an extensive two-dimensional analytical model. The model covers the heat generation by the resistive heater, the heat conduction within the diaphragm, the radiation loss at the diaphragm’s surface, and the heat sink caused by the supporting silicon frame. This contribution summarizes the analytical heat transfer analysis in the microstructure and its verification by a computer numerical model, the measurement setup, and the associated thermal parameter extraction procedure. Furthermore, we report on measurement results for the thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and effective emissivity obtained from calorimetric flow sensor specimens featuring dielectric thin-film diaphragms made of plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon nitride.     

Elastic–plastic modeling of heat-treated bimorph micro-cantilevers

This paper models the residual stress distributions within micro-fabricated bimorph cantilevers of varying thickness. A contact model is introduced to calculate the influence of contact on the residual stress following a heat treatment process. An analytical modeling approach is adopted to characterize bimorph cantilevers composed of thin Au films deposited on thick poly-silicon or silicon-dioxide beams. A thermal elastic–plastic finite element model (FEM) is utilized to calculate the residual stress distribution across the cantilever cross-section and to determine the beam tip deflection following heat treatment. The influences of the beam material and thickness on the residual stress distribution and tip deflections are thoroughly investigated. The numerical results indicate that a larger beam thickness leads to a greater residual stress difference at the interface between the beam and the film. The residual stress established in the poly-silicon cantilever is greater than that induced in the silicon-dioxide cantilever. The results confirm the ability of the developed thermal elastic–plastic finite element contact model to predict the residual stress distributions within micro-fabricated cantilever structures with high accuracy. As such, the proposed model makes a valuable contribution to the development of micro-cantilevers for sensor and actuator applications.     

A new in situ residual stress measurement method for a MEMS thin fixed-fixed beam structure

A new method is described to measure the in situ residual stress state in a thin fixed-fixed beam structure used in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The methodology can be applied to devices at the anticipated operational and environmental temperatures. The new technique makes use of differences in the thermal expansion coefficient between the thin beam and the substrate. The residual stress distribution is determined by matching the thermal deflections from a finite element model (FEM) to measured deflections of the beam. All previous residual stress measurement methods for MEMS suspended structures reported a uniformly distributed residual stress. Experimental data coupled with the new analytical method suggests that this may not be adequate for the case of a suspended thin structure with nonplanar surface topology. A stress gradient through the thickness must be included in the determination of the stress state of the beam. The new method indicates a spatially varying residual stress distribution and is capable of de-coupling the mean stress and the stress gradient through the thickness. It was found through an extensive literature review that the quantification of the stress gradient in a thin suspended structure has never been reported. The de-coupling makes the prediction of the stress state at different temperature points possible. Details of the new method are demonstrated and discussed by the use of a capacitive radio frequency (RF) MEMS switch.     

Design and batch fabrication of probes for sub-100 nm scanningthermal microscopy

A batch fabrication process has been developed for making cantilever probes for scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) with spatial resolution in the sub-100 nm range. A heat transfer model was developed to optimize the thermal design of the probes. Low thermal conductivity silicon dioxide and silicon nitride were chosen for fabricating the probe tips and cantilevers, respectively, in order to minimize heat loss from the sample to the probe and to improve temperature measurement accuracy and spatial resolution. An etch process was developed for making silicon dioxide tips with tip radius as small as 20 nm. A thin film thermocouple junction was fabricated at the tip end with a junction height that could be controlled in the range of 100-600 nm. These thermal probes have been used extensively for thermal imaging of micro- and nano-electronic devices with a spatial resolution of 50 nm. This paper presents measurement results of the steady state and dynamic temperature responses of the thermal probes and examines the wear characteristics of the probes     

A study of the effect of the fabrication process on diffusion in a layered thin film

 A diffusion layer that is likely to be formed at the interfaces of the multi-layered thin film would affect its overall mechanical properties; the thinner the thin film, the more significant would be the effect. We measure the distribution of atoms and estimate the thickness of the diffusion layer at the vicinity of the interfaces among thin films of Al and SiO₂ and silicon wafer with the aid of Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). The effect of heat treatment after fabrication of the thin films on the diffusion is also investigated. Received: 28 December 1998/Accepted: 4 January 1999     

SnO2基薄膜气体传感器制作与敏感性测试

在现有的粉末烧结型SnO2基气敏传感器基础上研制了薄膜型SnO2基气体传感器,以抛光的丽热石英玻璃为基片,真空磁控溅射50～70nm厚度的SnO2薄膜,在SnO2薄膜上分别溅射不连续的ZnO、Al2O3、CeO2、InO2等薄膜,传感器背面溅射30μm的Ni80Cr20电阳合金作为传感器加热电阻,用薄膜热电偶测量传感器工作温度。测试了不同的复合瞑对传感器灵敏度和选择性的影响,并对传感器的吸附与解吸速度进行了测试,薄嗅传感器达到相同灵敏度所需的工作温度比粉末烧结型传感器下降100～150℃,吸附解吸速度比粉末烧结型快。     

纳米薄膜面向导热系数的分子动力学模拟

基于分子动力学研究纳米薄膜的导热系数现状,建立了一种导热模型.采用非平衡态分子动力学研究了纳米薄膜长度、厚度、空穴对导热系数的影响.选取结构简单、可靠实验数据和势能函数的晶体氩为模型,计算了氩晶体薄膜面向导热系数.模拟结果表明:纳米薄膜面向导热系数随薄膜长度和厚度增加而增加,增加到一定尺寸时,不再增加,近似相等,具有显著的尺寸效应.相同条件下,存在空穴的氩晶体纳米薄膜导热系数低于理想氩晶体纳米薄膜的导热系数.     

Design and simulation of a thermo transfer type MEMS based micro flow sensor for arterial blood flow measurement

Thermo transfer type MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) based micro flow sensing device have promising potential to solve the limitation of implantable arterial blood flow rate monitoring. The present paper emphasizes on modeling and simulation of MEMS based micro flow sensing device, which will be capable of implantable arterial blood flow rate measurement. It describes the basic design and model architecture of thermal type micro flow sensor. A pair of thin film micro heaters is designed through MEMS micro machining process and simulated using CoventorWare; a finite element based numerical code. A rectangular cross section micro channel has been modeled where in micro heater and thermal sensors are embedded using the same CoventorWare tools. Some promising and interesting results of thermal dissipation depending upon very small amount of flow rate through the micro channel are investigated. It is observed that measuring the variation of temperature difference between downstream and upstream, the variation of fluid flow rate in the micro channel can be measured. The numerical simulation results also shows that the temperature distribution profile of the heated surface depends upon microfluidic flow rate i.e. convective heat transfer is directly proportional to the microfluidic flow rate on the surface of the insulating membrane. The simplified analytical model of the thermo transfer type flow sensor is presented and verified by simulation results, which are very promising for application in arterial blood flow rate measuring in implantable micro devices for continuous monitoring of cardiac output.     

Anti-diffusive methods for hyperbolic heat transfer

The hyperbolic heat transfer equation is a model used to replace the Fourier heat conduction for heat transfer of extremely short time duration or at very low temperature. Unlike the Fourier heat conduction, in which heat energy is transferred by diffusion, thermal energy is transferred as wave propagation at a finite speed in the hyperbolic heat transfer model. Therefore methods accurate for Fourier heat conduction may not be suitable for hyperbolic heat transfer. In this paper, we present two anti-diffusive methods, a second-order TVD-based scheme and a fifth-order WENO-based scheme, to solve the hyperbolic heat transfer equation and extend them to two-dimension, including a nonlinear application caused by temperature-dependent thermal conductivity. Several numerical examples are applied to validate the methods. The current solution is compared in one-dimension with the analytical one as well as the one obtained from a high-resolution TVD scheme. Numerical results indicate that the fifth-order anti-diffusive method is more accurate than the high-resolution TVD scheme and the second-order anti-diffusive method in solving the hyperbolic heat transfer equation.     

Bulk-Micromachined Test Structure for Fast and Reliable Determination of the Lateral Thermal Conductivity of Thin Films

A novel bulk-micromachined test structure is presented for the fast and reliable determination of the lateral thermal conductivity of thin films. The device is composed of a heater resistor and thermocouples that are fabricated in polysilicon (poly-Si), and the associated processing and DC measurement procedures are straightforward. The validity of the method is supported by numerical simulations and verified by experimental determination of the lateral thermal conductivity of aluminum (Al), aluminum nitride (AlN), p-doped poly-Si, and silicon nitride (SiN) thin films. For Al, an average value of 217 W m^-1 K^-1 was found for 1-mum thick layers. For the other layers, a number of thicknesses were studied, and the increase of thermal conductivity with thickness was effectively detected: for AlN, values from 7 to 11.5 W m^-1 K^-1 were found, and for p-doped poly-Si, values went from 21 to 46 W m^-1 K^-1 for thicknesses from 0.15 to 1 mum. For SiN, a value of 1.8 was extracted for layers thicker than 0.5 mum.     

Thin film shape memory alloy microactuators

Thin film shape memory alloys (SMAs) have the potential to become a primary actuating mechanism for mechanical devices with dimensions in the micron-to-millimeter range requiring large forces over long displacements. The work output per volume of thin film SMA microactuators exceeds that of other microactuation mechanisms such as electrostatic, magnetic, thermal bimorph, piezoelectric, and thermopneumatic, and it is possible to achieve cycling frequencies on the order of 100 Hz due to the rapid heat transfer rates associated with thin film devices. In this paper, a quantitative comparison of several microactuation schemes is made, techniques for depositing and characterizing Ni-Ti-based shape memory films are evaluated, and micromachining and design issues for SMA microactuators are discussed. The substrate curvature method is used to investigate the thermo-mechanical properties of Ni-Ti-Cu SMA films, revealing recoverable stresses up to 510 MPa, transformation temperatures above 32°C, and hysteresis widths between 5 and 13°C. Fatigue data shows that for small strains, applied loads up to 350 MPa can be sustained for thousands of cycles. Two micromachined shape memory-actuated devices-a microgripper and microvalve-also are presented     

A methodology for quantitative evaluation of local electrical conductivity: from micron to submicron

The local electrical conductivity of aluminum thin film with dimensions from micron to submicron was quantitatively measured by a four-point atomic force microscope (AFM) technique. The technique is a combination of the principles of four-point probe method and standard AFM. A silicon nitride based AFM probe with a V-shaped two-dimensional sliced structure tip was patterned by using conventional photolithography method. The probe was then etched to four parallel electrodes isolated from each other, for the purpose of performing current input and electrical potential drop measurement. The spacing between electrodes is smaller than 1.0 μm, which facilitates the quantitative electrical conductivity measurement of ultrathin film. The four-point AFM probe technique is capable of measuring surface topography together with local conductivity simultaneously. The technique was applied to a series of 99.999% aluminum thin films with thicknesses from micron to submicron. The repeatable measurements demonstrate the capability of this technique and its possible extension to be used for fast in situ electrical properties characterization of submicron interconnects that widely applied in nanosensors and nanodevices.     

多弧离子淀积TiO_2气敏薄膜材料

介绍了采用多弧离子镀设备．在玻璃基片上沉积ＴｉＯ２薄膜材料的制备技术。掺杂方法简单实用．采用ＳＥＭ、ＸＲＤ等对薄膜的结构和成分进行了观察和分析，用方形四点探针法测量了薄膜的电导率并对薄膜的气敏性能进行了初步研究。结果表明，ＴｉＯ２膜的组织致密，主要为金红石相结构．ＴｉＯ２薄膜在３００℃下对Ｏ２有较好的选择性．