Towards Robust Thermal MEMS: Demonstration of a Novel Approach for Solid Thermal Isolation by Substrate-Level Integrated Porous Microstructures

Most current thermal MEMS use fragile structures such as thin-film membranes or microcantilevers for thermal isolation. To increase the robustness of these devices, solid thermal insulators that are compatible with MEMS cleanroom processing are needed. This work introduces a novel approach for microscale thermal isolation using porous microstructures created with the recently developed PowderMEMS wafer-level process. MEMS devices consisting of heaters on a thin-film membrane were modified with porous microstructures made from three different materials. A thermal model for the estimation of the resulting thermal conductivity was developed, and measurements for porous structures in ambient air and under vacuum were performed. The PowderMEMS process was successfully used to create microscale thermal insulators in silicon cavities at the wafer level. Measurements indicate thermal conductivities of close to 0.1 W/mK in ambient air and close to 0.04 W/mK for porous structures under vacuum for the best-performing material. The obtained thermal conductivities are lower than those reported for both glass and porous silicon, making PowderMEMS a very interesting alternative for solid microscale thermal isolation.