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Thermistor

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Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Synonyms

Thermally sensitive resistor

Definition

A thermally sensitive resistor, the primary function of which is to exhibit a change in electrical resistance with a change in body temperature (EIA Standard 1963).

Characteristics

Thermistors are metallic oxide electronic semiconductors which are manufactured from oxides of nickel, manganese, iron, cobalt, magnesium, titanium, and other metals. All are epoxy encapsulated with two leads. The first reported thermistor was attributed to the British physicist Michael Faraday in 1832, based on his study on the semiconducting behavior of silver arsenide (Ag2S) (Faraday 1832).

The relationship between the resistance of a thermistor and its body temperature may be expressed as

$$ R(T)={R}_0\left({T}_0\right)\cdot \exp \left[\beta \cdot \left(1/T-1/{T}_0\right)\right] $$
(1)

where β is the “material constant” of the thermistor, R(T) is the resistance at temperature T under self-heated conditions, and R 0(T 0) denotes the resistance at T 0with...

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References

  • Electronic Industries Association (EIA), New York, N. Y., Standard No. RS-275 (1963) Thermistor definitions and test method

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  • Sapoff M, Oppenheim RM (1963) Theory and application of self-heated thermistors. Proc IEEE 51(10):1292–1305

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  • Steinhart JS, Hart SR (1968) Calibration curves for thermistors. Deep Sea Res Oceanogr Abstr 15:497–503

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Correspondence to Xiaoqiu Yang .

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Yang, X., Lin, W. (2018). Thermistor. In: Bobrowsky, P., Marker, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_282-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_282-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12127-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12127-7

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