Heat-capacity measurements on small samples: The hybrid method

A newly developed method is presented for measuring heat capacities on small samples, particularly where thermal isolation is not sufficient for the use of the traditional semiadiabatic heat-pulse technique. This “hybrid technique” is a modification of this heat-pulse method in case the temperature drift of the sample after the heat pulse is not linear but exponential. Deliberate extrapolations of these exponential drift curves, dependent on the evaluated relaxation time, yield reliable results for the temperature steps. The method is faster than the traditional relaxation method, and by comparing with the values published by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) on copper, the accuracy is shown to be of the order of 1%.