Calorimetry is a widely used technique to study the thermal properties of materials including heat capacity, temperature and enthalpy of transformation/chemical reaction. In a typical calorimetry mesurement, a controlled power is supplied to the material to heat it up, and the resulting temperature as a function of time is recorded.
The selling point of scanning AC calorimetry is that it enables accurate nanocalorimetry measurements at a wide range of scanning rate (-2e3 K/s to 2e3 K/s) as well as temperature (currently up to 1000 C, limited by the calorimetry device). Such range (scanning rate < 1e3 and temperature > 500 C) is hard to be accessed by DC calorimetry due to the increasing effect of heat loss from sample to the environment.
X-ray Diffraction provides important information on material structure and can be a very helpful complement to calorimetry measurements. Combining the two technique is not easy due to the different time scale where the two are typically performed (~1s for XRD and ~1ms for calorimetry). The use of scanning AC calorimetry and sychrontron X-ray source provides an overlapping window (~10 ms to ~100s), and enables their combination in a single measurement.
1.
A scanning AC calorimetry technique for the analysis of nano-scale quantities of materials
K Xiao, JM Gregoire, PJ McCluskey, JJ Vlassak,
Review of Scientific Instruments 83, 114901
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/rsi/83/11/10.1063/1.4763571
2.
Scanning AC nanocalorimetry combined with in-situ x-ray diffraction
K Xiao, JM Gregoire, PJ McCluskey, D Dale, JJ Vlassak
Journal of Applied Physics 113 (24), 243501
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/113/24/10.1063/1.4811686
3.
In-situ X-ray diffraction combined with scanning AC nanocalorimetry applied to a Fe0.84Ni0.16 thin-film sample
JM Gregoire, K Xiao, PJ McCluskey, D Dale, G Cuddalorepatta, JJ Vlassak
Applied Physics Letters 102 (20), 201902-201902-4
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/102/20/10.1063/1.4806972