Impact of Magnetron Sputtering Parameters on Thermoelectric Properties of Tungsten-Rhenium Thin-Film Thermocouples Sensor

Abstract

In this paper, we present the analysis of the impact of radio frequency magnetron sputtering parameters on the average Seebeck coefficient and maximum reliable working time of thin-film thermocouple (TFTC) sensor based on tungsten-rhenium, and the effect of subsequent optimization of sputtering parameters on the performance of these thermocouples. It can be observed that the repeatability error of TFTCs with magnetron sputtering parameters optimization is ±1.5%, the nonlinear error is ±0.29%, the hysteresis error is ±1.93%, and the average Seebeck coefficient ranges from 26.87 to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$27.3~\mu \text{V}/^{\circ }\text{C}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> at thermal cycle experiments for 40 h. The electromotive force behavior experiments show optimized TFTCs with protection subjected to a temperature difference of 900 °C is 19.3 mV. Compared with TFTCs without magnetron sputtering parameters optimization and protection, it has improved the thermoelectric properties of tungsten-rhenium TFTCs sensor to be a viable replacement candidate for the requirement of high-temperature measurement.