Jb. Xu et al., THERMAL SENSORS FOR INVESTIGATION OF HEAT-TRANSFER IN SCANNING PROBE MICROSCOPY, Review of scientific instruments, 65(7), 1994, pp. 2262-2266
Planar thermocouples designed for investigation of heat transfer in sc
anning tunneling microscopy and scanning thermal microscopy are descri
bed. The limit of sensitivity to local thermal power can be as small a
s 10 nW. The devices are based on two different thin films formed as a
cross on a thin glass substrate. Heat fluxes in the cross point can b
e detected by measuring the thermoelectric signal from two ends of the
cross. As described elsewhere planar thermocouples of this type have
been successfully used to detect the energy which is deposited by tunn
eling electrons and to measure the heat which is coupled across a subm
icron vacuum gap between two metals by the fluctuating fields of elect
romagnetic surface modes.