A Versatile Micro-Scale Silicon Sensor/Actuator with Low Power Consumption

We designed a CMOS compatible hot-surface silicon device operating at a power down to sub-muW. It has a pillar-shaped structure with a nano-size (10-100 nm) conductive link between the electrodes separated by a SiO₂ layer. The device is capable of maintaining a jam-size hot-surface area of several hundred degrees centigrade due to nonradiative recombination of carriers in a thin (13 nm) poly silicon surface layer. Such a device can be used as a light source, a heat source, as well as a sensitive detector of light and heat. As a direct application, we demonstrate the feasibility to perform as an adsorption-desorption sensor, and as a unit for activating chemisorption/decomposition (i.e. microreactor)