Thermal transducers

Abstract

There are a number of MEMS devices that can be classified as being thermal transducers due to the involved energy going through the thermal mode at some point. In particular, thermal actuators have mechanical components that move when heated, and the temperature of thermal sensors changes in response to stimuli from their environment. Often the physical quantity of interest in a thermal sensor is temperature itself, though several other physical quantities can be measured indirectly via such sensors, particularly velocity and other flow quantities. Qualitative descriptions of several of thermal actuators and sensors were given in Chapter 7.