Optical measurements of the thermal properties of nanofluids

The authors show that the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of colloidal particle dispersions can be rapidly obtained with high accuracy and reproducibility by exploiting a noninvasive, all-optical thermal lensing method. Applications of this technique to model suspensions of spherical monodisperse particles suggest that classical models for the effective properties of composite media hold up to rather high volume fractions, while no anomalous thermal conductivity effects are found. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.