Design and simulations for a calorimetric micro-sensor for methane detection

This work consists of two sections: design and simulations of a calorimetric methane sensor. In the first part, the technology steps and the masks are presented. The sensor is built on a suspended membrane released using front side sacrificial etch or back side anisotropic etch. The sensitive element is a platinum temperature sensor covered with a layer of doped porous alumina. The second part shows several electrothermal simulations that show the ability of the sensor to operate at temperatures over 300 Celsius using voltages below 10 volts.