An FPGA based temperature controller for Differential Thermal Analyzer

Differential thermal analyzer (DTA) is an instrument used to characterize the new materials and it works based on the themoanalytic qualitatively technique. In this paper a digital design of a programmable temperature controller for the DTA has been presented. This programmable controller has been designed using very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) and implemented in a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The heating rate of the DTA can be flexibly selected from the range between 1degC per minute and 15degC per minute. Also, the temperatures are measured with the accuracy of 0.125 degrees. The sampling time between the reference and the feedback temperatures of the controller has been designed for 2.56 seconds. The simulations and experimental results of the proposed temperature controller are presented.