A low-cost picowatt calorimeter using a flexible printed circuit board
Calorimetry is crucial in biology, chemistry, physics, and pharmaceutical research, enabling the detection of heat changes at nanowatt and picowatt levels. However, traditional calorimetry systems are often limited by high costs and complex fabrication processes. Here, we reduce the cost and fabrication complexity of microcalorimeters by utilizing widely available flexible printed circuit manufacturing processes. This device achieves temperature and power resolutions of ≈ 6 μK and ≈ 654 pW in vacuum. Its feasibility is validated across a wide range of measurements, including salt crystallization, protein crystallization, and cellular metabolism. Our concept enhances the accessibility of microcalorimeters for high-resolution thermal analysis, which is challenging for conventional calorimeters.
Authors
- Hanliang Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2431-7005)
- Pavel Neužil (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9040-281X)
- Imrich Gablech
- Jan Brodský (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5656-3158)
- Qi‐Long Yan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9401-5056)
- Luke P. Lee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1436-4054)
- Shujie Yang
- Yue Zhang
- Jianguo Feng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0452-4114)
- Lan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7124-2718)
Institutions
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Ewha Womans University (KR)
- Hefei University of Technology (CN)
- Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN)
- Brno University of Technology (CZ)
- Sungkyunkwan University (KR)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-03-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58025-9
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- thermodynamics and calorimetric analyses
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.51
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China