Engineering Commons^™

Thermal Characterization Of Liquid Samples With Three-Dimensional On-Chip Micro Calorimeter, Hye Jeong Bak

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis presents a three dimensional on-chip microfabricated calorimeter (μ-calorimeter) to extract thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity of liquid samples. These thermal properties are used to understand thermal reaction behavior, obtain information of stability for reactant molecules, and characterize a material. Thermally characterized solvents can be utilized to investigate a solute. The μ-calorimeter introduced in this work has 3D wafer-scale structure. The μ-calorimeter consists of a reaction chamber, a nickel heater, and a resistance temperature detector (RTD) sensor. The reaction chamber enables analysis of 200 nl liquid samples. Also, its enclosed structure prevents liquid sample evaporation during an experiment. …