Sensors & Transducers Journal

    (ISSN 1726- 5479)

Vol. 84, Issue 10, October 2007, pp.1660-1668

MEMS Tunneling Micro Thermometer Based onTip Deflection of Bimetallic Cantilever Beam

Samrand K. Nezhadian, ^*Ghader Rezazadeh, Shahram Kh. Arya

Mech. Eng. Dept. Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

^*Tel.: +98-914-145-1407, fax: +98-441-277-7022

^*E-mail: g.rezazadeh@mail.urmia.ac.ir

Received: 29 September 2007   /Accepted: 23 October 2007   /Published: 30 October 2007

Abstract: Micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) technology promises to significantly reduce the size, weight and cost of a variety of sensor systems. In this article has been described a highly sensitive novel type of thermometer based on deflection of a “bimetallic” microbeam. The proposed thermometer converts the thermal changes of a cantilevered bimetallic beam of submillimeter size into an electrical signal through tunneling-current modulation. The governing thermo-mechanical equation of a bimetallic cantilever beam has been derived and solved analytically. The obtained results show that the proposed tunneling micro thermometer is very sensitive to temperature changes due to exponential increasing of tunneling current but because of small gap between metallic electrodes, measurable range of temperature changes is small.

Keywords: Tunneling, Thermometer, Bimetallic Cantilever, MEMS

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