Operational Performance of a Photonic Based Microcalorimeter: Specific Heat Measurement

A photonic-based nanohole array sensor microcalorimetry is developed at the Microfluidic laboratory at Northeastern University utilizing changes in the extraordinary optical transmission (EOT). This experiment utilized calorimetry to conduct a novel specific heat measurement method for non-reacting fluids on the microscale level. This paper describes a calibration process and an accuracy test for this novel calorimetry. The test chamber was prefilled with deionized (DI) water (55 μl) and heated to steady state. Then room temperature DI water (15 μl) was injected and was treated as an unknown material. The temperature time history is recorded by the thermistor data acquisition system and the EOT by a CCD camera. An energy balance equation and algorithm were developed to calculate the specific heat of the injected material which was compared with its known value. The observed EOT and the corresponding temperature calculated from it exhibit the same trends. The error between the measured and known specific heat specific is 2–6%. The calorimetry has a significantly faster thermal response than traditional calorimeters and requires less compound with high accuracy.