Adjustment of Heating Rate for Maximum Resolution in TG and TMA (MaxRes)

Conventional thermogravimetric analysis (TG) uses constant heating rates to determine decomposition rates of a material and compositional analysis. Often, the decomposition steps can not be separated clearly enough due to parallel or consecutive reactions. If the reaction rates and the respective activation energies are enough different the TG resolution can be much enhanced by lowering the heating rate during the decomposition steps. The automated discrete adjustment of the heating rate is controlled by a set of parameters, such as threshold values, waiting times and rate factors. This technique, called MaxRes, allows for faster compositional analysis without loss of resolution. The same technique is also applicable to thermomechanical analysis (TMA) if time/temperature dependent events such as softening are to be separated. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.