Thermal imaging of hot spots in nanostructured microstripes

Abstract

By scanning thermal microscopy, we study the behavior of nanostructured metallic microstripes heated by Joule effect. Regularly spaced indentations have been made along the thin film stripe in order to create hot spots. For the designed stripe geometry, we observe that heat remains confined in the wire and in particular at shrinkage points within ∼1μm2. Thermal maps have been obtained with a good lateral resolution (< 300nm) and a good temperature sensitivity (∼1K). © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.