Characterization and modeling of electro-thermal MEMS structures

Thermal functional circuits are an interesting group of the MEMS elements with high a potential. A practical realisation is called Quadratic Transfer Characteristics (QTC) element of which driving principle is the Seebeck effect. Such devices can be applied e.g. as RMS meters. In this paper we are dealing with the analyses of a QTC element from different perspectives. A family of compact models is presented. These models are suitable to use in network simulation programs. To investigate the detailed behaviour of the device, we measured a few secondary properties of the structure, such as temperature dependence, cut-off frequency and non-quadratic error.