Peltier microcalorimeter

Abstract

We developed an ac microcalorimeter utilizing the Peltier effect of a thermocouple junction as an ac power source. This Peltier microcalorimeter allows us to measure the absolute value of the heat capacity of small samples with submilligrams of mass. The performance of the microcalorimeter was checked in the temperature range of 15–420 K with $\mathrm{\alpha -}{\mathrm{Al}}_{\mathrm{2}}{\mathrm{O}}_{\mathrm{3}}$ samples of 0.54 and 2.25 mg. The absolute accuracy was $\text{±3\%}$ for the range of 30–150 K and $\text{±1\%}$ for 150–420 K. The precision was better than 0.5% in the whole temperature range.