Price, Duncan M.; Grandy, David B.; Reading, Mike; Bozec, Laurent; Hammiche, Azzedine; Pollock, Hubert M.;Hyphenated micro-TA techniques. Proc. 29th North American Thermal Analysis Society Conference, September 24-26 (2001) St Louis, Missouri, USA, pp. 574-579
Micro-thermal analysis (micro-TA) combines the imaging capabilities of the atomic force microscope with the ability to perform localized thermal analysis (calorimetry and thermomechanical measurements). This affords a means of physical characterization of different areas of a specimen by their thermal properties (eg. melting point or softening temperature). Localized chemical composition cannot be obtained directly by thermal analysis and is usually inferred by some a priori knowledge of the sample. In order to overcome this drawback we are developing hybrid instrumentation which interfaces the micro-TA system to a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, mass spectrometer or a FTIR spectrometer. For GC-MS and MS the thermal probe is used to pyrolize a region of the sample. The evolved gases can be trapped for subsequent thermal desorbtion into a GC-MS or passed directly to the MS via a heated capillary transfer line. The ability of the thermal probe to act as a passive temperature sensor (rather than an active heater/heat flow meter) is exploited for FTIR measurements. In this mode the sample is irradiated by a broadband IR source focused on its surface by reflective optics and the temperature rise due to absorption of the radiation is detected by the probe and used to reconstruct its IR spectrum.