Electrical noise characteristics of a doped silicon microcantilever heater-thermometer

We report measurements of the electronic noise characteristics of doped silicon microcantilever heater-thermometers. The noise floor is measured over the range 1 Hz - 12 kHz while the cantilever is resistively heated over the temperature range of 297 - 615 K. At low frequency 1/f, or flicker, noise is the dominant noise type, while at high frequency the Johnson, or thermal, noise dominates. The Johnson noise floor is found to be less than 10 nV / Hz^1/2, which corresponds to a cantilever temperature precision of about 2 - 30 μK / Hz^1/2 over the temperature range measured. To our knowledge, this paper reports the first detailed measurements of noise in a heated microcantilever sensor.