Thermistor


A thermistor is a type of resistor whose resistance is dependent on temperature, more so than in standard resistors. The word is a combination of thermal and resistor. Thermistors are widely used as inrush current limiters, temperature sensors, self-resetting overcurrent protectors, and self-regulating heating elements.
Thermistors are of two opposite fundamental types:
Thermistors are generally produced using powdered metal oxides. With vastly improved formulas and techniques over the past 20 years, NTC thermistors can now achieve accuracies over wide temperature ranges such as ±0.1 °C or ±0.2 °C from 0 °C to 70 °C with excellent long-term stability. NTC thermistor elements come in many styles such as axial-leaded glass-encapsulated, glass-coated chips, epoxy-coated with bare or insulated lead wire and surface-mount, as well as rods and discs. The typical operating temperature range of a thermistor is −55 °C to +150 °C, though some glass-body thermistors have a maximal operating temperature of +300 °C.
Thermistors differ from resistance temperature detectors in that the material used in a thermistor is generally a ceramic or polymer, while RTDs use pure metals. The temperature response is also different; RTDs are useful over larger temperature ranges, while thermistors typically achieve a greater precision within a limited temperature range, typically −90 °C to 130 °C.

Basic operation

Assuming, as a first-order approximation, that the relationship between resistance and temperature is linear, then
where
Thermistors can be classified into two types, depending on the sign of. If is positive, the resistance increases with increasing temperature, and the device is called a positive temperature coefficient thermistor, or posistor. If is negative, the resistance decreases with increasing temperature, and the device is called a negative temperature coefficient thermistor. Resistors that are not thermistors are designed to have a as close to 0 as possible, so that their resistance remains nearly constant over a wide temperature range.
Instead of the temperature coefficient k, sometimes the temperature coefficient of resistance is used. It is defined as
This coefficient should not be confused with the parameter below.

Steinhart–Hart equation

In practical devices, the linear approximation model is accurate only over a limited temperature range. Over wider temperature ranges, a more complex resistance–temperature transfer function provides a more faithful characterization of the performance. The Steinhart–Hart equation is a widely used third-order approximation:
where a, b and c are called the Steinhart–Hart parameters and must be specified for each device. T is the absolute temperature, and R is the resistance. To give resistance as a function of temperature, the above cubic equation in can be solved, the real root of which is given by
where
The error in the Steinhart–Hart equation is generally less than 0.02 °C in the measurement of temperature over a 200 °C range. As an example, typical values for a thermistor with a resistance of 3 kΩ at room temperature are:

''B'' or ''β'' parameter equation

NTC thermistors can also be characterised with the B parameter equation, which is essentially the Steinhart–Hart equation with, and,
where the temperatures are in kelvins, and R0 is the resistance at temperature T0. Solving for R yields
or, alternatively,
where.
This can be solved for the temperature:
The B-parameter equation can also be written as. This can be used to convert the function of resistance vs. temperature of a thermistor into a linear function of vs.. The average slope of this function will then yield an estimate of the value of the B parameter.

Conduction model

NTC (negative temperature coefficient)

Many NTC thermistors are made from a pressed disc, rod, plate, bead or cast chip of semiconducting material such as sintered metal oxides. They work because raising the temperature of a semiconductor increases the number of active charge carriers it promotes them into the conduction band. The more charge carriers that are available, the more current a material can conduct. In certain materials like ferric oxide with titanium doping an n-type semiconductor is formed and the charge carriers are electrons. In materials such as nickel oxide with lithium doping a p-type semiconductor is created, where holes are the charge carriers.
This is described in the formula
where
Over large changes in temperature, calibration is necessary. Over small changes in temperature, if the right semiconductor is used, the resistance of the material is linearly proportional to the temperature. There are many different semiconducting thermistors with a range from about 0.01 kelvin to 2,000 kelvins.
The IEC standard symbol for a NTC thermistor includes a "−t°" under the rectangle.

PTC (positive temperature coefficient)

Most PTC thermistors are made from doped polycrystalline ceramic which have the property that their resistance rises suddenly at a certain critical temperature. Barium titanate is ferroelectric and its dielectric constant varies with temperature. Below the Curie point temperature, the high dielectric constant prevents the formation of potential barriers between the crystal grains, leading to a low resistance. In this region the device has a small negative temperature coefficient. At the Curie point temperature, the dielectric constant drops sufficiently to allow the formation of potential barriers at the grain boundaries, and the resistance increases sharply with temperature. At even higher temperatures, the material reverts to NTC behaviour.
Another type of thermistor is a silistor. Silistors employ silicon as the semiconductive component material. Unlike ceramic PTC thermistors, silistors have an almost linear resistance-temperature characteristic.
Barium titanate thermistors can be used as self-controlled heaters; for a given voltage, the ceramic will heat to a certain temperature, but the power used will depend on the heat loss from the ceramic.
The dynamics of PTC thermistors being powered also is extremely useful. When first connected to a voltage source, a large current corresponding to the low, cold, resistance flows, but as the thermistor self-heats, the current is reduced until a limiting current is reached. The current-limiting effect can replace fuses. In the degaussing circuits of many CRT monitors and televisions an appropriately chosen thermistor is connected in series with the degaussing coil. This results in a smooth current decrease for an improved degaussing effect. Some of these degaussing circuits have auxiliary heating elements to heat the thermistor further.
Another type of PTC thermistor is the polymer PTC, which is sold under brand names such as "Polyswitch" "Semifuse", and "Multifuse". This consists of plastic with carbon grains embedded in it. When the plastic is cool, the carbon grains are all in contact with each other, forming a conductive path through the device. When the plastic heats up, it expands, forcing the carbon grains apart, and causing the resistance of the device to rise, which then causes increased heating and rapid resistance increase. Like the BaTiO3 thermistor, this device has a highly nonlinear resistance/temperature response useful for thermal or circuit control, not for temperature measurement. Besides circuit elements used to limit current, self-limiting heaters can be made in the form of wires or strips, useful for heat tracing. PTC thermistors 'latch' into a hot / high resistance state: once hot, they stay in that high resistance state, until cooled.
The effect can be used as a primitive latch/memory circuit, the effect being enhanced by using two PTC thermistors in series, with one thermistor cool, and the other thermistor hot.
The IEC standard symbol for a PTC thermistor includes a "+t°" under the rectangle.

Self-heating effects

When a current flows through a thermistor, it generates heat, which raises the temperature of the thermistor above that of its environment. If the thermistor is being used to measure the temperature of the environment, this electrical heating may introduce a significant error if a correction is not made. Alternatively, this effect itself can be exploited. It can, for example, make a sensitive air-flow device employed in a sailplane rate-of-climb instrument, the electronic variometer, or serve as a timer for a relay as was formerly done in telephone exchanges.
The electrical power input to the thermistor is just
where I is current, and V is the voltage drop across the thermistor. This power is converted to heat, and this heat energy is transferred to the surrounding environment. The rate of transfer is well described by Newton's law of cooling:
where T is the temperature of the thermistor as a function of its resistance R, is the temperature of the surroundings, and K is the dissipation constant, usually expressed in units of milliwatts per degree Celsius. At equilibrium, the two rates must be equal:
The current and voltage across the thermistor depend on the particular circuit configuration. As a simple example, if the voltage across the thermistor is held fixed, then by Ohm's law we have, and the equilibrium equation can be solved for the ambient temperature as a function of the measured resistance of the thermistor:
The dissipation constant is a measure of the thermal connection of the thermistor to its surroundings. It is generally given for the thermistor in still air and in well-stirred oil. Typical values for a small glass-bead thermistor are 1.5 mW/°C in still air and 6.0 mW/°C in stirred oil. If the temperature of the environment is known beforehand, then a thermistor may be used to measure the value of the dissipation constant. For example, the thermistor may be used as a flow-rate sensor, since the dissipation constant increases with the rate of flow of a fluid past the thermistor.
The power dissipated in a thermistor is typically maintained at a very low level to ensure insignificant temperature measurement error due to self-heating. However, some thermistor applications depend upon significant "self-heating" to raise the body temperature of the thermistor well above the ambient temperature, so the sensor then detects even subtle changes in the thermal conductivity of the environment. Some of these applications include liquid-level detection, liquid-flow measurement and air-flow measurement.

Applications

PTC

The first NTC thermistor was discovered in 1833 by Michael Faraday, who reported on the semiconducting behavior of silver sulfide. Faraday noticed that the resistance of silver sulfide decreased dramatically as temperature increased.
Because early thermistors were difficult to produce and applications for the technology were limited, commercial production of thermistors did not begin until the 1930s. A commercially viable thermistor was invented by Samuel Ruben in 1930.