[Webinar] Calorimetric methodologies: principles and applications
Calorimetry is a powerful physicochemical methodology for measuring the thermal properties of a variety of substances, including soft-materials, and is the only technique for direct determination of the enthalpy change of the processes. Among calorimeters, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) are widely used in many fields of sciences. DSC, giving direct thermodynamic information, has proved to be very useful in clarifying the energetics of macromolecule transitions and in characterizing their thermal stability. On the other hand, ITC is very suitable to study the energetics of molecular interactions, giving the binding constant, the stoichiometry and all the thermodynamic parameters. Here basic principles, common instrumentations, data analyses and some applications will be discussed. Specifically, two examples of calorimetric applications to study the thermodynamics of secondary nano-emulsion formation and the energetics of ligand-receptor binding affinity on endothelial cells will be discussed.