Bulk thermal analysis provides widely used techniques for coatings analysis. However, bulk techniques like DSC, TMA, DMA and others are limited to measuring average or aggregrate properties of the entire sample. This masks critical variations in material applications that can have a huge impact on coating performance. The numerous performance advantages of nanoscale coatings are well known. However one of the biggest problems facing developers of nanoscale coatings is these cannot be analyzed using most current techniques. We will present a new technique which will allow us to obtain thermal properties of a wide range of coatings including nanoscale coatings. The technique is based on our microfabricated thermal probes which enable us to heat local regions of less than 100nm in diameter and obtain phase transition information. Data will be provided where the technique has been used in applications ranging from automotive coatings to flat panel displays and medical packaging. Our technique also allows generating an image of the phase transitions of the surface thus enabling the identification of thermal inhomogeneities and localized defects which are extremely difficult to identify any other way.
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