Construction of High-Precision Adiabatic Calorimeter and Thermodynamic Study on Functional Materials

Abstract

In this chapter, a high-precision fully automated adiabatic calorimeter for heat capacity measurement of condensed materials in the temperature range from 80 to 400 K was described in detail. By using this calorimeter the heat capacity and thermodynamic prop- erties of two kinds of function materials, ionic liquid and nanomaterials, were investigated. The heat capacities of IL [EMIM][TCB] were measured over the temperature range from 78 to 370 K by the high-precision-automated adiabatic calorimeter. Five kinds of nanostructured oxide materials, Al 2 O 3, SiO 2 , TiO 2 , ZnO 2 , ZrO 2 , and two kinds of nanocrys- talline metals: nickel and copper were investigated from heat capacity measurements. It is found that heat capacity enhancement in nanostructured materials is influenced by many factors, such as density, thermal expansion, sample purity, surface absorption, size effect, and so on. available from commercial apparatus in the world. In this chapter, hence, we introduce a high-precision fully automatic adiabatic calorimeter constructed in our themochemistry laboratory, and report the thermodynamic property studies of two types of functional materials: ionic liquid and nanomaterials performed by this adiabatic calorimeter.