Thermoresistive Temperature Measuring Devices

THERMORESISTIVE TEMPERATURE MEASURING DEVICES

Principle of operation

·        A change in temperature causes the electrical resistance of a material to change.

·        The resistance change is measured to infer the temperature change.

·        There are two types of thermoresistive measuring devices: resistance temperature detectors and thermistors, both of which are described here.

Resistance temperature detectors

A resistance temperature detector (abbreviated RTD) is basically either a long, small diameter metal wire (usually platinum) wound in a coil or an etched grid on a substrate, much like a strain gauge.

The resistance of an RTD increases with increasing temperature, just as the resistance of a strain gage increases with increasing strain. The resistance of the most common RTD is 100 Ω at 0ºC.

If the temperature changes are large, or if precision is not critical, the RTD resistance can be measured directly to obtain the temperature. If the temperature changes are small, and/or high precision is needed, an electrical circuit is built to measure a change in resistance of the RTD, which is then used to calculate a change in temperature. One simple circuit is the quarter bridge Wheatstone bridge circuit, here called a two-wire RTD bridge circuit

R_lead represents the resistance of one of the wires (called lead wires) that run from the bridge to the RTD itself. Lead resistance is of little concern in strain gage circuits because R_lead remains constant at all times, and we can simply adjust one of the other resistors to zero the bridge.

For RTD circuits, however, some portions of the lead wires are exposed to changing temperatures. Since the resistance of metal wire changes with temperature, R_lead changes with T and this can cause errors in the measurement. This error can be non-trivial changes in lead resistance may be misinterpreted as changes in RTD resistance, and therefore give a false temperature measurement.

Thermistors

A thermistor is similar to an RTD, but a semiconductor material is used instead of a metal. A thermistor is a solid state device. Resistance thermometry may be performed using thermistors. Thermistors are many t useful over limited ranges of temperature. They are small pieces of ceramic material made by sintering mixtures of metallic oxides of Manganese, Nickel, Cobalt, Copper and Iron etc.

Resistance of a thermistor decreases non-linearly with temperature. Thermistors are extremely sensitive but over a narrow range of temperatures. A thermistor has larger sensitivity than does an RTD, but the resistance change with temperature is nonlinear, and therefore temperature must be calibrated with respect to resistance. Unlike RTDs, the resistance of a thermistor decreases with increasing temperature. The upper temperature limit of thermistors is typically lower than that of RTD. However, thermistors have greater sensitivity and are typically more accurate than RTDs or thermocouples. A simple voltage divider, where Vs is the supply voltage and Rs is a fixed (supply) resistor. Rs and Vs can be adjusted to obtain a desired range of output voltage Vout for a given range of temperature. If the proper value of Rs is used, the output voltage is nearly (but not exactly) linear with temperature. Some thermistors have 3 or 4 lead wires for convenience in wiring –two wires are connected to one side and two to the other side of the thermistor (labeled 1, 2 and 3, 4 above).