Abstract
The goal of this research is to design and to fabricate CMOS micromachined probes for scanning thermal microscopy that enable quantitative nanometer-scale study of thermal properties for the sample by the deposited tip. CMOS materials are used for thermoelectric sensing. The dielectric layer in the structure is used for thermal isolation. During a scanning thermal process, the contact force between the probe and the sample must be constant. We thus integrate the piezoresistor and thermal actuator into a scanning thermal microscopy. According to all of the above, scanning thermal microscopy can detect thermal spatial resolution in nanometer-scale by using a probe to scan the sample surface. Prior work has used bolometer, thermocouple, and shottky diode for detection. In all of the relevant publications, there is no scanning thermal microscopy integrated completely with CMOS technique, and this is what we aim to accomplish.