Tomographic imaging and scanning thermal microscopy: thermal impedance tomography

The application of tomographic imaging techniques developed for medical applications to the data provided by the scanning thermal microscope will give access to true three-dimensional information on the thermal properties of materials on a micrometer length scale. In principle, the technique involves calculating and inverting a sensitivity matrix for a uniform isotropic material, collecting ordered data at several modulation frequencies, and multiplying the inverse of the matrix with the data vector. In practice, inversion of the matrix is impractical, and a novel iterative technique is used. Examples from both simulated and real data are given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.