Although scanning thermal microscope has shown the highest spatial resolution in local temperature and thermophysical property measurement, its usefulness has been severely limited due to difficulties in quantitative measurement. We propose a double scan technique that measures temperature only from the heat transfer through the tip-sample contact by the subtraction of the signal due to the heat transfer through the air. A rigorous theoretical model for this technique is derived. The effectiveness of the double scan technique in quantitative temperature measurement is demonstrated experimentally.

Scanning Thermal Microscope (SThM) is known as a tool of the highest spatial resolution in measuring local temperature and thermophysical properties. However, despite the highest spatial resolution of SThM, its usefulness has been limited because of the difficulties related to the quantitative interpretation of the measured data. We suggest a double scan technique that can make an advantage of heat transfer through the tip-sample contact by subtraction of air conduction signal obtained from ‘lift mode’ scan. The thermal signal obtained by the new method is free from the influence of air conduction. This, in turn, allowed the quantitative profiling of the sample temperature.

No abstract