Sensing elements

1. Resistive sensing elements

• Potentiometers for linear and angular
displacement measurement
• Resistive metal and semiconductor sensors for
temperature measurement
• Metal and semiconductor resistive strain
gauges
• Semiconductor resistive gas sensors
 2. Capacitive sensing elements
• They sense variable area, variable separation
and variable dielectric
• capacitive displacement sensors
• capacitive pressure sensors
• thin-film capacitive humidity sensor, dielectric
is a polymer with capacity to absorb water
molecules, this changes the dielectric constant
 3. Inductive sensing elements
• Variable inductance (variable reluctance)
displacement sensors
• Linear Variable Differential Transformer (LVDT)
displacement sensor
 4. Electromagnetic sensing elements
• These elements are used for the
measurement of linear and angular velocity
and are based on Faraday’s law of
electromagnetic induction
 5. Thermoelectric sensing elements
• Thermoelectric or thermocouple sensing
elements are commonly used for measuring
temperature
 6. Elastic sensing elements
• Linear accelerometer
• Pressure sensor
• Angular accelerometer
• Torque sensor.
 7. Piezoelectric sensing elements
• Piezoelectric elements are commonly used for the measurement of
acceleration and vibration.
• For machine vibration it is important to measure at least one of
displacement, velocity and acceleration.
• It is possible to use a displacement transducer, differentiating the output
once to obtain velocity information and twice to obtain acceleration
• displacement transducers often have insufficient sensitivity, inadequate
frequency response or too large a mass for these applications
• the operation of differentiation amplifies unwanted high frequency noise.
• A better solution is to use a piezoelectric accelerometer, which has
sufficient sensitivity, adequate frequency response and low mass;
• the accelerometer output can be integrated for velocity and displacement
information.
• The operation of integration tends to attenuate high frequency noise.
8. Piezoresistive sensing elements
• The piezoresistive effect was defined as the
change in resistivity ρ of a material with
applied mechanical strain
• In piezoresistive pressure sensors the elastic
element is a flat silicon diaphragm.
• The distortion of the diaphragm is sensed by
four piezoresistive strain elements made by
introducing doping material into areas of the
silicon, where the strain is greatest.
 9. Electrochemical sensing elements
• Ion selective electrodes (ISEs) are sensors which
directly measure the activity or concentration of
ions in solution.
• Some solid-state materials give an
electrochemical response to certain gases. An
example is zirconia, which is sensitive to oxygen
• Chemically sensitive field effect transistors
(CHEMFET): One example uses a platinum or
palladium layer on the gate to detect the
presence of hydrogen.
 10. Hall effect sensors
• An important application of Hall devices is as
magnetic field sensors