Kissinger Method in Kinetics of Materials: Things to Beware and Be Aware of

The Kissinger method is an overwhelmingly popular way of estimating the activation energy of thermally stimulated processes studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and derivative thermogravimetry (DTG). The simplicity of its use is offset considerably by the number of problems that result from underlying assumptions. The assumption of a first-order reaction introduces a certain evaluation error that may become very large when applying temperature programs other than linear heating. The assumption of heating is embedded in the final equation that makes the method inapplicable to any data obtained on cooling. The method yields a single activation energy in agreement with the assumption of single-step kinetics that creates a problem with the majority of applications. This is illustrated by applying the Kissinger method to some chemical reactions, crystallization, glass transition, and melting. In the cases when the isoconversional activation energy varies significantly, the Kissinger plots tend to be almost perfectly linear that means the method fails to detect the inherent complexity of the processes. It is stressed that the Kissinger method is never the best choice when one is looking for insights into the processes kinetics. Comparably simple isoconversional methods offer an insightful alternative.