Thermal Analyzers

Thermal analysis, or calorimetry, correlates temperature-dependent events to physical characteristics of a sample, such as mass, structure, strength, brittleness, elongation, decomposition, evolved gases, oxidation, reduction, or physicochemical structure. Any property that changes with temperature lends itself to some variant of thermal analysis. Every industry concerned with the relationship between energy and how their products behave in the real world uses thermal analyzers. Thermal measurements provide food companies with values for caloric (energy) content, materials manufacturers with phase transition temperatures, and academic researchers with insights into phases of matter. Thermal measurements are relevant in every phase of a product’s life cycle, from development to manufacturing, quality control, and release. “Everything you do to a material, everything you add to it, how you formulate it, where you store it, and how you beat up on it, all affect the final deliverable property,” notes Michael Zemo, a market manager at Mettler- Toledo (Columbus, OH). And all these are related to how the material or finished product handles heat. Thermal analysis is not only about high temperatures. Some instruments have a cooling function that enables monitoring of low-temperature events such as glass transition in polymers.