Temperature is one of the most required physical quantities to be measured across all industries. Seamless, accurate, real-time and reliable measurements are critical across all verticals – from managing the manufacturing process to saving patients’ lives.

Market offers a wide range of solutions including thermocouples, resistance temperature detectors (RTDs), thermistors, infrared thermometers, or semiconductor thermometers.

RVmagnetics offers a customised alternative – sensor based on magnetic principles, able to measure temperature with a sensitivity of 0.01 °C (in narrow range) . A potential temperature measurement range varies depending on the application covering an interval from –273°C up to 200°C (with heat-resistant equipment even higher and special composition of MicroWires even 500°C). Same as for other commercial sensors, the sensitivity of the single sensor is dependent on the temperature range (smaller the range, higher the accuracy).

A tailor-made sensing solution provides benefits such as size, range, chemical resistance, and on top of it mechanically independent results.

As the microwire is a passive sensor, it does not require any wiring directly to the sensor itself. Due to its size, it can be embedded inside the materials, without creating any flaws in the material (delamination of fibres within composite). The measurement can still be performed from the outside when necessary. Data acquisition can be performed even through the metals and in ideal case up to 10 cm distance.

RVmagnetics offers an opportunity to use a microwire sensor as a reliable qualitative temperature sensor – providing only digital information, whether the temperature was overshot.

Demonstration of Temperature measurement with MicroWire sensors

In the video, we present the Temperature detection demonstration kit. The reason for the demonstration and the experiment is to showcase the contactless detection of temperature.

The main parts of the demo-kit are:

  • black-box which includes the sensing head and electronics (the size and shape of a final sensing system are tailor-made to meet the spatial limitations,
  • plastic bar with a temperature-dependent microwire attached,

tablet containing a custom-designed application communicating with the black-box via Bluetooth, displaying the real-time measurement of the microwire's tem­perature.

Measurement of the MicroWire attached to the plastic bar provides the temperature of its surrounding, which is room (ambient) temperature. As the finger is placed on the plastic bar, the temperature of the finger transfers heat to the bar, which is quickly detected by the MicroWire.

Conclusion:

It is possible to develop a highly-accurate temperature sensor, with a customised, miniature hardware solution as per the client's requ­irement. Further, it is possible to create a heat distribution map, monitor the cooling and heating of certain locations of different materials, etc. With the possibilities being vast and unique per client – it is important to showcase the basics of the system, which we present in the video.