Fabrication of wafer-level micro silicon heaters for chip scale atomic magnetometers

A wafer-level micro silicon heater based on the highly-doped silicon wafer is demonstrated in the system of chip-scale atomic magnetometer. We showed the fabrication process on a 4 inch wafer. Different voltages are applied to the heaters and the temperatures of vapor cell are tested by temperature sensor in order to get the heating efficiency of heaters, also optical heating is tested to make a comparison with silicon heaters. Based on the wafer-level micro silicon heaters, one 180KHz AC electronic current was applied because atomic magnetometer is insensitive to high frequency AC magnetic field, heating the vapor cell to about 150°C. Measured results of atomic absorption utilizing this micro silicon heater exhibit an effective and low-cost way to measure weak magnetic field with high sensitivity.