Development of highly sensitive temperature microsensors for localized measurements

Abstract

This paper presents the design, fabrication and characterization of temperature microsen-sors based on Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTDs) with a meander-shaped geometry. Numer-ical simulations were performed for studying the sensitivity of the RTDs according to their wind-ings numbers as well as for optimizing their layout. These RTDs were fabricated using well-estab-lished microfabrication and photolithographic techniques. The fabricated sensors feature high sensitivity (0.3542 mV/°C), linearity and reproducibility in a temperature range of 35 to 45 °C. Addi-tionally, each sensor has a small size with a strong potential for their integration in microfluidic devices, as organ-on-a-chip, allowing the possibility for in-situ monitoring the physiochemical properties of the cellular microenvironment.