This paper presents an accurate thermal characterization of thin-film heaters manufactured on glass substrates. The characterization has been performed on Cr/Al/Cr meandered heaters. Techniques commonly adopted for measuring the temperature coefficient of resistance, the thermal resistance and thermal capacitance in the case of Si-based microheaters have been conveniently modified to consider the fundamentally different thermal parameters of a heater manufactured on glass. To reduce power consumption and thermal capacitance, a grating of 250-μm wide trenches, stopped at 80μm from the opposite metalized front surface, was manufactured on the back side of the heaters, obtaining an increase of the thermal resistance of about 110% and a decrease of the thermal capacitance of about 65% when the glass is in good thermal contact with a heat sink. The measured values of thermal resistance and time …