Stability of Negative Resistance Coefficient Thermistors for Long-term Temperature Measurement

Abstract

The NTC (negative temperature coefficient) thermistor precision is significantly increased by the calibration process. The full calibration procedure process itself is sophisticated as it requires a set of calibration points when using the Steinhart-Hart equation for the linearization of the T(R) (Temperature -Resistance) characteristics. Aging and degradation processes tend to distort the metrological characteristics of the NTC thermistors. The novel method of calibration for groups of thermistors produced by the same manufacturer using the same technology is proposed in this paper. The initial calibration data acquired from the calibration results or from the manufacturer is used for approximate computations. During the additional calibration, the approximate data for the group of thermistors is adjusted using linear transformations. The result analysis for five different types of thermistors (A, B, C, D and E) revealed that the temperature measurement errors in the temperature range from 20 0 C to 80 0 C can be reduced by up to 10 times using the proposed method. The aging and degradation processes were investigated using the thermocycling procedure implemented with steep transitions (100 0 C ... 0 0 C ... 100 0 C). The thermistor R(T) characteristics were repeatedly measured after 1000, 2000 and 3000 thermocycles. The results revealed that statistically, the average error of the temperature measurement for the types C, D and E increased significantly after 3000 thermocycles, whereas the measurement error trend of the thermistors of types A and B was insignificant (p > 0.05).

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