New humidity sensor for OEM customers saves energy 

Humidity and temperature sensors are utilised in many industries, from the automobile industry to environmental technology. E+E Elektronik has responded to this need and now offers the HCT01 – a new and innovative humidity and temperature sensor. The HCT01 is the only SMD humidity sensor that is supplied without digital processing and does not have to be adjusted by the user. The sensor thus has many applications with OEM customers. Since the HCT01 requires no power supply itself, it is particularly suitable for energy-saving or battery-operated applications.

Humidity and temperature sensors are used in the automobile industry: For adapting fuel mixtures, for controlling climate control systems or for monitoring the defogging of windscreens. With conventional models, a simple integration of the sensor into the various, existing control circuitries is not always possible. This is because in addition to the actual sensor, interfaces for the digital evaluation and transmission of the measured data are often included. This makes it more difficult to integrate the sensors into existing applications. For this reason, the developers from E+E Elektronik now offer a novel capacitive humidity sensor – the HCT01 (see figure 1 below). The sensor, having just a few millimeters in size, measures the relative air humidity and temperature and supplies the highest measurement precision. The capacitive humidity sensor is already pre-adjusted during production so that the customer can dispense with a complicated adjustment later on. Thus, no integrated ASIC is necessary, which is why the HCT01 can be utilised in the most diverse of OEM applications.
Another great advantage of the HCT01 is that it requires no power supply of any kind itself. The sensor is thus particularly suitable for energy-saving projects like Energy Harvesting: In this example, energy is able to be gained from the change in the ambient temperature or the air humidity alone. The HCT01 is predestined for these types of scenarios.

E+E Elektronik manufacturers the smallest possible sensors using modern thin film technology under cleanroom conditions. This is also the case with the newest humidity sensor – the HCT01. Its measurement deviation for humidity at a relative air humidity of 30 to 70 percent amounts to only ± two percent. The temperature sensor is available in two versions and supplies the most precise measurement values with up to 3000 Ohm as platinum or molybdenum version. With a working range of -40 to 140 Celsius, the HCT01 is custom tailored to an industrial application. The DFN housing of the sensor permits soldering with the popular reflow process. A protective film protects the active sensor surface from external influences such as dust or salts.

The E+E Elektronik developers have provided the precise specifications of the HCT01 in the humidity sensor datasheet, which is available on their Internet site. You can also find a Preadjusted Humidity Sensor Application Note on the site as well. It shows users how they can integrate the sensor as effectively and cost efficiently as possible into their applications.