• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.35 no.11
• /
• pp.1133-1137
• /
• 2011

A novel technique for the fabrication of a glass micropipette-based thermal sensor was developed utilizing inexpensive thermocouple materials. Thermal fluctuation with a resolution of ${\pm}0.002$ K was measured using the fabricated thermal probe. The sensors comprise unleaded low-melting point solder alloy (Sn) as a core metal inside a borosilicate glass pipette coated with a thin film of Ni, creating a thermocouple junction at the tip. The sensor was calibrated using a thermally insulated calibration chamber, the temperature of which can be controlled with a precision of ${\pm}0.1$ K and the thermoelectric power (Seebeck coefficient) of the sensor was recorded from 8.46 to $8.86{\mu}V$/K. The sensor we have produced is both cost-effective and reliable for thermal conductivity measurements of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and biological temperature sensing at the micron level.