Absorbing infrared radiation efficiently is important for critical applications such as thermal imaging and infrared spectroscopy. Common infrared absorbing materials are not standard in Si VLSI technology. We demonstrate ultra-broadband mid-infrared absorbers based purely on silicon. Broadband absorption is achieved by the combined effects of free carrier absorption, and vibrational and plasmonic absorption resonances. The absorbers, consisting of periodically arranged silicon gratings, can be fabricated using standard optical lithography and deep reactive ion etching techniques, allowing for cost-effective and wafer-scale fabrication of micro-structures. Absorption wavebands in excess of 15 micrometers (5–20 μm) are demonstrated with more than 90% average absorptivity. The structures also exhibit broadband absorption performance even at large angles of incidence (θ = 50°), and independent of polarization.

The dominance of conduction and the negligible effect of gravity, and hence free convection, are verified in the case of microscale heat sources surrounded by air at atmospheric pressure. A list of temperature-dependent heat transfer coefficients is provided. In contrast to previous approaches based on free convection, supplied coefficients converge with increasing temperature. Instead of creating a new external function for the definition of boundary conditions via conductive heat transfer, convective thin film coefficients already embedded in commercial finite element software are utilized under a constant heat flux condition. This facilitates direct implementation of coefficients, i.e. the list supplied in this work can directly be plugged into commercial software. Finally, the following four-step methodology is proposed for modeling: (i) determination of the thermal time constant of a specific microactuator, (ii) determination of the boundary layer size corresponding to this time constant, (iii) extraction of the appropriate heat transfer coefficients from a list provided and (iv) application of these coefficients as boundary conditions in thermomechanical finite element simulations. An experimental procedure is established for the determination of the thermal time constant, the first step of the proposed methodology. Based on conduction, the proposed method provides a physically sound solution to heat transfer issues encountered in the modeling of thermal microactuators.

Self aligned nano patterning of TiO2 using area selective atomic area deposition.

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