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Metal nanowires can emit coherent polarized thermal radiation, work as uncooled bolometers, and provide localized heating. In this paper, we engineer the temperature dynamics of electrically driven Pt nanoheaters on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. We present three designs and we electrically characterize and model their thermal impedance in the frequency range from 3 Hz to 3 MHz. Finally, we show a temperature modulation of 300 K while consuming less than 5 mW of power, up to a frequency of 1.3 MHz. This result can lead to significant advancements in thermography and absorption spectroscopy., QC 20160523

We present a method to characterize the temperature dynamics of miniaturized thermal IR sources. The method circumvents the limitations of current IR photodetectors, by relying only on an electrical measurement rather than on optical detection. Thus, it enables the characterization of the light emission of IR sources over their full operation frequency range. Moreover, we develop a model of thermal IR sources allowing simulations of their thermal and electrical behavior. By combining measurements and modeling, we achieve a comprehensive characterization of a Pt nanowire IR source: the reference resistance R-0 = 17.7 Omega, the TCR alpha = 2.0 x 10(-3) K-1, the thermal mass C = 2.7 x 10(-14) J/K, and the thermal conductance G = 1.3 x 10(-6) W/K. The thermal time constant could not be measured, because of the frequency limitation of our setup. However, the operation of the source has been tested and proved to function up to 1 MHz, indicating that the thermal time constant of the source is smaller than 1 mu s., QC 20140813, GASENS