Experimental study on thermal characteristics of suspended platinum nanofilm sensors

In this paper, the thermal characteristics of suspended platinum (Pt) nanofilm sensors have been investigated experimentally. The Pt nanofilm sensors with the thickness of 28–40 nm, the width of 260–601 nm, and the length of 5.3–5.7 μm were fabricated by electron beam lithography, electron beam physical vapor deposition and isotropic/anisotropic etching processes. Based on the one-dimensional heat conduction model, the in-plane thermal conductivity of the nanofilm sensors was obtained from the linear relation of the volume-averaged temperature increase and the heating rate measured in vacuum. Furthermore, natural convection heat transfer coefficients of air around the suspended nanofilm sensors at the pressures ranging from 1 × 10−2 Pa to 1 atm were also investigated. The experimental results show that the in-plane thermal conductivities of the nanofilm sensors are much lower than those of the bulk values, the natural convection heat transfer coefficients are, however, very high at the atmospheric pressure.