E+E Elektronik GmbH (Austria) has announced the first truly monolithic humidity/temperature sensor, the HMC01, with both sensors located on a single glass substrate. The HMC01 is designed for stable, accurate humidity and temperature measurements in demanding industrial applications. The monolithic design provides exceptionally good thermal contact between the humidity and temperature elements, enabling extremely accurate measurements at moderate to high humidity levels.
Conventional dual humidity/temperature sensors have two substrates glued together, each with one sensor. This leads to several practical problems, such degraded accuracy due to loss of thermal contact if the two substrates become delaminated. Thanks to its true monolithic design, the HMC01 combines the outstanding properties of E+E Elektronik's well-known, high-quality capacitive humidity sensors with a temperature sensor on a single substrate, providing a number of technical advantages.
For measuring under continuous high humidity conditions with a risk of condensation, the sensor can be operated in a controlled heating mode to prevent humidity drift. Here the temperature sensor is used as a heating element that is regulated to keep the relative humidity close to sensor at 76%, which protects the sensor against the stress of high humidity.
The temperature sensor can also be used to periodically heat the humidity sensor to high temperatures to regenerate it. This is beneficial in demanding industrial process applications with high concentrations of chemicals, solvents or cleaning agents. Heating the sensor expels foreign molecules and cleanses the sensor, thus reversing the effect of any accumulated calibration drift.
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