Dependence of the temperature distribution in micro hotplates on heater geometry and heating mode

This paper reports experimental and numerical results on the temperature distribution in micro hotplates. The test structures applied in this study consist of suspended membranes with two integrated polysilicon heaters and discrete resistive thermistors for temperature measurement. The influence of different heater geometries and heating modes are evaluated with respect to an improvement of the temperature homogeneity across the suspended membrane. The experiments are compared with simulation results obtained with the finite element (FE) simulation tool SOLIDIS 6.0.