Novel ac Heating–dc Detection Method for Active Thermoelectric Scanning Thermal Microscopy

A novel and reliable ac heating–dc detection method is developed for active thermoelectric scanning thermal microscopy, which can map out local thermal property imaging by point-heating and point-sensing with nanoscale spatial resolution. The thermoelectric probe is electrically heated by an ac current, and the corresponding dc thermoelectric voltage is detected. Using the measured dc voltage, the temperature information can be extracted with the known Seebeck coefficient of the thermoelectric probe. The validity and accuracy of this method have been verified by a 25.4  μ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upmu $$\end{document}m thick K-type thermocouple by both experiment and numerical simulation in high vacuum and in air. The experimental results show that the proposed method is reliable and convenient to monitor the temperature of the junction.