Optical device for thermal diffusivity determination in liquids by reflection of a thermal wave.

In this work, we present a device for determination of the thermal diffusivity using the oblique reflection of a thermal wave within a solid slab that is in contact with the medium to be characterized. By using the reflection near a critical angle under the assumption that thermal waves obey Snell's law of refraction with the square root of the thermal diffusivities, the unknown thermal diffusivity is obtained by simple formulae. Experimentally, the sensor response is measured using the photothermal beam deflection technique within a slab that results in a compact device with no contact of the laser probing beam with the sample. We describe the theoretical basis and provide experimental results to validate the proposed method. We determine the thermal diffusivity of tridistilled water and glycerin solutions with an error of less than 0.5%.