Miniaturization of LTCC based hot plates for gas sensors application

Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) is amongst the favoured technologies for preparing miniature integrated packages and devices for various sensor and actuators applications. It is known that semiconductor gas sensors work at elevated temperatures. We have developed LTCC based micro hotplates with integrated temperature sensors for preparing miniature gas sensors. We have devised way to fabricate small size (Long side 6.5mm) suspended hot plate design of LTCC based hotplate with integrated thermistor. This paper presents results of heater and thermistor characterization for solid rectangular block and suspended hotplate designs of the hot plate. It is seen that the heaters as well as the thermistors present a linear behavior for both the designs. The rectangular solid block design dissipates about 3.5W power while the suspended hot plate design requires only about 144mW reaching steady state temperature of 250°C.