Quantitative thermal microscopy using thermoelectric probe in passive mode

A scanning thermal microscope working in passive mode using a micronic thermocouple probe is presented as a quantitative technique. We show that actual surface temperature distributions of microsystems are measurable under conditions for which most of usual techniques cannot operate. The quantitative aspect relies on the necessity of an appropriate calibration procedure which takes into account of the probe-to-sample thermal interaction prior to any measurement. Besides this consideration that should be treated for any thermal contact probing system, the main advantages of our thermal microscope deal with the temperature available range, the insensitivity to the surface optical parameters, the possibility to image DC, and AC temperature components up to 1 kHz typically and a resolution limit related to near-field behavior. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.