Thermal Characterization of Microliter Amounts of Liquids by a Micromachined Calorimetric Transducer

Abstract

We show a simple method of measuring thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of liquids. For this we used stacked liquid calorimeter chips fabricated with thin film membranes for optimum thermal isolation of the sample under test. DC joule heating allows measurement of conductivity, AC joule heating allows measurement of diffusivity. We measured the response for iso-propanol (IPA), methanol and water, and water with IPA, methanol and sugar, and the measurement results compare well with the conductivity values. Diffusivity could also be measured.