Using thermography to investigate thermal characteristics of porous silicon

A low cost thermography system capable of submilliKelvin resolution has been developed and will be described through this work. The instrument is applied to the study of low thermal conductivity porous silicon films, which is a challenge given that thermography has previously been developed to study only thin (released) films or highly conducting films on insulating substrates. Our preliminary results indicate that the system is capable of measuring porous silicon thin films on highly conducting substrates, but requires application of the pertinent underlying physics for parameter determination.