Influence of the Contact Metallization on the Characteristics of Resistive Temperature Sensors Based on EPOXY/MWCNT Composites

摘要

The influence of different contact metallization materials and geometries on stability, sensitivity and linearity of epoxy/carbon nanotube based temperature sensors has been investigated. In our experiments, we found a perfect linear current-voltage characteristics and a stable conductance-temperature characteristics in the case of the sensor structures with the evaporated niobium contacts and a non-linear and noisy current-voltage characteristic with hysteresis in the case of the copper wire contacts. After a burn-in procedure, however, we could partially stabilize the electrical characteristics of the copper-wire contact based devices. However, in the latter case, even if a higher sensor sensitivity has been measured, the temperature sensing characteristics remained rather noisy and an acceptable long-term stability could not be achieved.