Thin Film (Add‑on)

Testing thermal insulating thin film samples

The Thin Film Measurement Module enables direct testing of the through-plane Thermal Conductivity of a thermal insulating film or coating on a bulk or slab-type substrate using our Hot Disk® sensors. The film can be plastic, paper, flexible glass, etc., while the coating can be a sprayed polymer, sputtered dielectric, spin-coated ceramic, etc. Only double-sided sample testing is supported, thus requiring two identical thin film/coating samples.

Our thin film measurement technique relies on clamping two identical film sample pieces with the Hot Disk® sensor in between and using a background substrate. A transient measurement results in the Thermal Conductivity and the Thermal Diffusivity of the background substrate to be obtained, together with the Thermal Resistance over the thin film sample. The through-plane apparent Thermal Conductivity of the thin film sample is extracted from the latter.

The Thin Film Measurement Module is also easy to work with. It involves setting the transient temperature reading’s measurement time, output power, and prior knowledge of the film/coating thickness as input parameters. Film/coating samples of thickness ranging from 500 micrometers to 10 micrometers can be tested.

We invented this thin film measurement technique, and the theory behind it is presented in our paper published in Thermal Conductivity in 1997¹. It meets ISO standard 22007-2. Hot Disk AB contributed to the development of this standard.

1. J. S. Gustavsson et al., ”On the use of the hot disk thermal constants analyser for measuring the thermal conductivity of thin samples of electrically insulating materials” Thermal Conductivity 24, pp. 116-122 (1997).↩︎

 

Thermal Conductivity Range:

Instruments	Range
TPS 3500, TPS 2500 S, TPS 2200, TPS 1000	0.01 to 5 W/m/K