Integrated circuit thermal analysis: A new thermal technique for polymer characterization

Polymer characterization has largely helped in the development of thermal analyzers and calorimeters, based mainly on the thermocouple technology, or more recently the semiconductor technology. With the use of an integrated silicon thermopile as a detector, a new thermal technique is appearing, to give more possibilities of investigations in the field of polymeric materials. Combining high sensitivity and use of small amount of sample, the originality of the new design comes from its low power consumption, giving rise to a portable version of the instrument. With such a concept, the thermal analysis technique is carried on the industrial site, to perform online measurements.Melting and crystallization, glass transition, control of reticulation are a promising field of applications for the characterization of polymeric materials on industrial sites.This revised version was published online in November 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.