Thermal Inverse Design: Tailoring the Transient Response of Resistive Micro-Heaters
Abstract
Microheaters underpin a broad range of applications that require localized and dynamic thermal control. Engineering their spatial and temporal temperature distributions is therefore essential, yet conventional heater design relies largely on iterative trial and error involving numerous full-scale thermal simulations. Here, we introduce an inverse design algorithm for pulsed heating, a common operating modality in thermal processing, sensing, switching, and material characterization. The approach uses a single lithographic step to pattern the doped regions of a silicon microheater and, in principle, enables on-demand peak temperature distributions under transient voltage excitation within one closed design loop. The algorithm also incorporates practical fabrication constraints, including finite lithographic resolution. We demonstrate its versatility through three representative designs. First, an optimized heater achieves more than a 20-fold reduction in temperature nonuniformity compared with a conventional uniformly doped heater. Second, inverse-designed doping effectively cancels the thermal gradient in a heater connected in series with a diode. Third, the method generates prescribed linear temperature gradients on demand. These results establish inverse-designed doping as a scalable and fabrication-compatible approach for tailoring transient temperature distributions in resistive microheaters.
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BibTeX
@misc{huang2026thermal,
title = {{Thermal Inverse Design: Tailoring the Transient Response of Resistive Micro-Heaters}},
author = {Muzhang Huang and Junhe Zhang and Khoi Phuong Dao and Juejun Hu and Hyun Jung Kim},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.08098},
eprint = {2611.08098},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08098},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Thermal Inverse Design: Tailoring the Transient Response of Resistive Micro-Heaters
AU - Muzhang Huang
AU - Junhe Zhang
AU - Khoi Phuong Dao
AU - Juejun Hu
AU - Hyun Jung Kim
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.08098
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08098
AB - Microheaters underpin a broad range of applications that require localized and dynamic thermal control. Engineering their spatial and temporal temperature distributions is therefore essential, yet conventional heater design relies largely on iterative trial and error involving numerous full-scale thermal simulations. Here, we introduce an inverse design algorithm for pulsed heating, a common operating modality in thermal processing, sensing, switching, and material characterization. The approach uses a single lithographic step to pattern the doped regions of a silicon microheater and, in principle, enables on-demand peak temperature distributions under transient voltage excitation within one closed design loop. The algorithm also incorporates practical fabrication constraints, including finite lithographic resolution. We demonstrate its versatility through three representative designs. First, an optimized heater achieves more than a 20-fold reduction in temperature nonuniformity compared with a conventional uniformly doped heater. Second, inverse-designed doping effectively cancels the thermal gradient in a heater connected in series with a diode. Third, the method generates prescribed linear temperature gradients on demand. These results establish inverse-designed doping as a scalable and fabrication-compatible approach for tailoring transient temperature distributions in resistive microheaters.
ER -