International Workshop on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC 1995) September 25-26, 1995, Grenoble, France: Special Issue, Sensors and Actuators A: Physical

The first THERMINIC Workshop was organized in the autumn of 1995 in Grenoble, France. The name THERMiNIC comes from the abbreviation of THERMal INvestigations of ICs and Microstructures and it is the title of a European Union COPER- NICUS research project. The subject of the Workshop involves all the fields related partly to integrated circuits, microelectronies or microsystems, partly to thermal and electrothermal effects and to their simulation, modelling or application. From the nature of the subject, several papers of the Workshop dealt with different kinds of temperature sensors, approaching from the side of design, simulation or parameter extraction. Further presentations discussed other sensor structures based on thermal effects, and there were papers dealing with the application of temperature sensors to the internal thermal testing of microsystems. We were very happy that Sensors and Actuators gave us the possibility to present the appropriate papers of the THERMINIC Workshop in a special issue, since all the previously mentioned subjects are close to the usual subject field of the journal. We tried to make this special issue open to any appropriate papers dealing with thermal-based sensors and actuators. Thus, although this special issue is based on the papers of the THERMINIC Workshop, we have invited further papers in the same field. Now we think that this was a good decision because some further valuable papers were submitted to this issue and we have also received papers in the subject field of actuators, which was not represented in the THERMINIC Workshop