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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Thermal Measurement Techniques in Analytical Microfluidic Devices
Published on: June 3, 2015
Measuring the configurational heat capacity of liquids
1Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1604, USA.
Abstract:
A high electric field impedance experiment on supercooled molecular liquids is employed to transfer energy to the slow modes by absorption from the field and detect the increase of their "configurational temperature", T(cfg), via the change of the relaxation times. This allows us to determine the configurational heat capacity, which accounts for most of the excess heat capacity for stronger liquids, but for only half of the heat capacity step in the case of more fragile systems. It is also observed that T(cfg) gradually approaches the phonon temperature on the structural relaxation time scale.
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