Thermal Conductivity

There are various ways to determine the thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity, depending on the type of material to be analyzed, the desired temperature range and the required accuracy.

The most common way to determine the thermal diffusivity is the laser flash method (LFA). The laser flash method can be used in a very wide temperature range (-125°C to 2800°C) and in almost the entire thermal conductivity range.

The Transient-Hot-Bridge method (THB) is a heating wire method optimized by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), where the thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity can be determined within less than a minute. The thermal conductivity measurement range extends from insulation materials to ceramics and metals.

The Heat Flow Meter (HFM) is a classic plate device that is mainly used for the quality control of insulating materials. The HFM can be used to determine thermal conductivity with the highest possible accuracy.

For thin film samples (nm to μm scale), LINSEIS has developed the new thin film laser flash (TF-LFA) and the universal chip-based thin film analyzer TFA (Thin Film Analyzer).

For thermal pastes and layer samples LINSEIS has developed the TIM-Tester device which acts like a guarded heat flow method. It can measure thermal conductivity in a range between -20°C up to 300°C for most common materials and some metals.