Investigation of the possibility of measuring the temperature of a thin metal film by measuring the infrared radiation emitted from the film 

Contacts:

Gunver Nielsen, CINF, DTU Physics, PhD student (gunver.nielsen@fysik.dtu.dk)
Lasse B. Thomsen, CINF, DTU Physics, PhD student (lasse.thomsen@fysik.dtu.dk)
Robert Jensen, CINF, DTU Physics, PhD student (Robert.jensen@fysik.dtu.dk
Ib Chorkendorff, CINF, DTU Physics, 4525-3170 (ibchork@fysik.dtu.dk)

http://www.cinf.dtu.dk/~s001610

Upper: Hot Electrons are tunneling into both the elements in the array of hot electron emitters. Lower: The oxide under the right element is broken down and the increased current has led the two nano-fuses to disconnect the connection to the rest of the array to avoid drawing excess current through the array.

At CINF we are working with hot electron devices, which are Si-SiO₂-Metal sandwiches which are capable of emitting electrons either into the top metal film or into the vacuum. The electrons are emitted by setting a bias between the Si-layer and the metal layer which causes electrons to tunnel through the SiO₂ -layer. When emitting electrons into the vacuum, some spatial distribution of the emittance is unavoidable due to both small impurities in the device and to the finite electrical resistance of the metal film which causes a voltage drop across the film and thus a gradient in the intensity of electrons.

In this project, we would like you to examine the possibility of using this radiation for measuring the temperature of the sample. Using traditional temperature measurement techniques (like thermocouples and RTDs) you will correlate the temperature of the sample to the emitted radiation as measured on an infrared sensitive photo-sensor. The ultimate aim of the project is to validate, whether this is a possible long-term solution for measurements of the film-temperature.