Precise Thermography of Microsystems in the Visible Region using a Standard CCD Camera

This communication reports on the thermal characterisation of microsystems using a visible thermography system based on a low cost standard CCD sensor. The interest of such a method in low spatial resolution applications, with the possibility to reach a true spatial resolution inferior to 500 nm, is demonstrated. One interesting point of this optical method is that it is not very sensitive to the optical properties of the object, contrary to thermoreflectance and infrared (IR) thermography. Thermal measurements were performed on micro-heaters commonly used in microsystems, platinum and silicon based micromachined heaters. The paper presents the capability of the method in terms of thermal resolution and spatial resolution, as well as the capacity to quickly obtain static and dynamic thermal images of the studied samples.