A novel on-chip three-dimensional micromachined calorimeter with fully enclosed and suspended thin-film chamber for thermal characterization of liquid samples

Abstract

A microfabricated calorimeter (l-calorimeter) with an enclosed reaction chamber is presented. The 3D micromachined reaction chamber is capable of analyzing liquid samples with volume of 200 nl. The thin film low-stress silicon nitride membrane is used to reduce thermal mass of the calorimeter and increase the sensitivity of system. The l-calorimeter has been designed to perform DC and AC calorimetry, thermal wave analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. The l-calorimeter fabricated with an integrated heater and a temperature sensor on opposite sides of the reaction chamber allows to perform thermal diffusivity and specific heat measurements on liquid samples with same device. Measurement results for diffusivity and heat capacitance using time delay method and thermal wave analysis are presented. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

Review of MEMS differential scanning calorimetry for biomolecular study

“…9 (a) Sensitivity calibration of a MEMS DSC using Joule heat [64]; (b) DSC scans showing the analysis of spray-dried lactose at a variety of high heating rates using fast scan DSC [65] 4.4 Recent MEMS DSC research Currently, MEMS DSC are developed for high throughput calorimetry, super sensitive biochemical sensing and cellular level measurement applications. There are significant works done towards these goals which are listed in Table 1 [60,[66][67][68][69]. They employ novel structures, temperature sensing materials to achieve high thermal performance.…”

“…Some of these designs are show in Fig. 10 [64, [66][67][68]. Figures 10(a) and 10(b) are MEMS DSC fabricated on suspended Si 3 N 4 membrane.…”

Thermal Measurement Techniques in Analytical Microfluidic Devices

“…6. To ensure the PS beads remain neutrally buoyant, add 2.7 µl of glycerol (1.26 g/cm 3 ) to DI water to match the fluid density to the polystyrene (PS) bead density (1.05 g/cm 3 ). 7.…”

“…In this process, use the on-chip calorimeter device ( Figure 4A) 3 to measure the thermal diffusivity and the specific heat of the samples. Note: On each die, there are 2 micro-calorimeter chambers ( Figure 4B).…”

“…Performing micro-scale calorimetry will reduce the sample consumption and increase the precision by offering higher repeatability compared to conventional, bulk calorimetry methods. The procedures for thermal conductivity and specific heat measurement using the on-chip micro-calorimeter device are presented elsewhere 3 . The details of the heat penetration time technique for thermal conductivity measurement and the thermal wave analysis (TWA) for specific heat measurements in microfluidic devices are described in the protocol section.…”