The small size and fast heating speed of these micromachined devices made it difficult to measure dynamic temperature distribution, so NIST researchers use a new high speed transient thermal imaging system to make the movies.
The imaging system collects the temperature information every microsecond for each 0.006" square of space on the microhotplate. The system works by successively acquiring temperature response as a function of time at each coordinate of the device being tested and by using a coordinate-translation scheme to move between points. Thermal responses at different points are reconstructed to make the thermal contour movie.