  Thermal inflation driven by a scalar field called "flaton" is a possible
scenario to solve the cosmological moduli problem. We study a model of thermal
inflation with a flaton chemical potential. In the presence of the chemical
potential, a negative mass squared of the flaton, which is necessary to
terminate the thermal inflation, is naturally induced. We identify the allowed
parameter region for the chemical potential ($\mu$) and the flaton
self-coupling constant to solve the cosmological moduli problem and satisfy
theoretical consistencies. In general, the chemical potential is a free
parameter and it can be taken to be much larger than the typical scale of soft
supersymmetry breaking parameters of $\mathcal{O} (1)$ TeV. For $\mu \gtrsim
10^8$ GeV, we find that the reheating temperature after the thermal inflation
can be high enough for the thermal leptogenesis scenario to be operative. This
is in sharp contrast to the standard thermal inflation scenario, in which the
reheating temperature is quite low and a special mechanism is necessary for
generating sufficient amount of baryon asymmetry in the Universe after thermal
inflation.
