Int J Thermophys (2010) 31:888–899 DOI 10.1007/s10765-009-0700-5 Feasibility Study of a Novel Technique for Measurement of Liquid Thermal Conductivity with a Micro-beam Sensor Hiroshi Takamatsu · Kyosuke Inada · Satoru Uchida · Koji Takahashi · Motoo Fujii Received: 12 June 2009 / Accepted: 31 December 2009 / Published online: 22 January 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract A new method was proposed to measure the thermal conductivity of liquids with infinitesimal samples, which are much smaller than those required in conventional methods. The method utilizes a micro-beam-type MEMS sensor fabri- cated across a trench on a silicon substrate. Numerical analysis of heat conduction within and around a uniformly heated sensor showed that the temperature of a 10 μm long sensor reached a steady state within approximately 0.1 ms, after the start of heat- ing. It was also revealed that the average temperature of the sensor at the steady state was higher in liquids with lower thermal conductivity. These results demonstrate a new idea of measuring the thermal conductivity of liquids within an extremely short time at a steady state before the onset of natural convection. Keywords Measurement technique · MEMS sensor · Numerical analysis · Thermal conductivity 1 Introduction The transient hot-wire method has been developed as the most reliable and popular method to measure the thermal conductivity of gases and liquids [1–5]. These hot-wire H. Takamatsu (B ) · K. Inada · S. Uchida Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan e-mail: takamatsu@mech.kyushu-u.ac.jp K. Takahashi Department of Aeronautics and Astronauts, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan M. Fujii National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 744 Motooka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan 123