PYROMEMS IGNITER BASED ON A TEMPERATURE GRADIENT: CONCEPT, FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION

A pyroMEMS igniter with increased combustion reliability is presented. The igniter consisted of a thin-film platinum Joule heater fabricated on a borosilicate glass substrate. Two different igniter layouts (meandering and annular) and three different binder mass fractions (5, 10 and 20 %) were evaluated. High-speed videos were used to judge the success or failure of the combustion events. Although the ignition success rate was 100 %, the combustion success rate was approximately 87.5 ± 7.1 % for the annular design versus 12.5 ± 7.1 % for the meandering layout. No effect on success rate was observed for the different binder contents tested. Rather, increasing the binder mass fraction increased the combustion duration.