Rapid thermal analysis of energetic materials with microfabricated differential scanning calorimeters

This paper introduces a class of single crystal silicon micro-scale differential scanning calorimeters for rapid detection and thermal characterization of energetic materials. The suspended membrane micro hotplates have fast time response and high sensitivity, which enables thermal measurements of melting endotherms and deflagration exotherms in energetic materials such as RDX and TNT. The potential exists for sensitivities in the picogram range with thermal scans in the 10´s of milliseconds and controlled thermal cycling faster than 10⁶degC/sec.