Micromachined Joule-Thomson cryocooler

Cooling of electronic circuitry to very low temperatures can improve the signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth of a system. In many cases the system, which is to be cooled, is very small so an accompanying small cooler would be obvious. This thesis describes the research performed in designing, optimizing and fabricating a cryogenic micro cold stage by means of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology only. This technology is highly suitable for the fabrication of a micro cooler because of the high accuracy, possibility to integrate the system with the electronic circuitry and use of batch processing, which can result in relatively low cost per unit.