Design and fabrication of MJTCs on quartz substrates at NIST

Dry etching is employed in the fabrication of new planar, thin-film multijunction thermal converters (MJTCs) on quartz membranes and crystalline quartz chips at NIST. The use of crystalline quartz as a material for the membrane and for the chip improves the performance of the MJTC in the frequency range from 100 kHz to 100 MHz. Simulations of the ac-dc voltage transfer difference for a heater resistance of 400 Omega in the frequency range from 1 MHz to 100 MHz show a reduction in the ac-dc transfer difference of more than one order of magnitude in comparison with MJTCs fabricated on silicon chips.