Patent ID: 7853424
Filing Date: 2010-12-14
Classification: G01K

Abstract:
1. A method of measuring temperature of a body or physical medium precisely, comprising thermally contacting the body or physical medium with a self-calibrating thermometer, the thermometer comprising a bipolar transistor formed of any semiconducting materials, said bipolar electronic structure comprising at least three regions of the said semiconducting materials of different conductivity type placed in an alternated way resulting in any one of two bipolar junction structures: P-N-P or N-P-N, each one of the semiconducting materials regions having an electrical contact, such that charge carriers are injected from the free charge carrier gas of either one of the external regions of the three regions, into a structure central region of the three regions, said charge carriers are injected as a result of an applied voltage across the external region injecting the charge carriers and the central structure region receiving the injected charge carriers, and the injected charge carriers diffuse through the structure central region reaching a third region of the three regions at an opposite end of the injecting structure region, where the charge carriers are collected by the said third region, said method comprising obtaining data and applying it to the following equation to determine a bipolar transistor temperature by application of the data to the equation, where I Cmi (V EBmi ) is a collector current measured while the applied voltage is an emitter-base forward bias voltage V EBmi , and T a is a parameter having absolute temperature units, q is the electron charge, k is the Bolztmann's constant, and wherein the data is obtained and the temperature of the body or physical medium is determined as follows: a) obtaining, by using automated equipment, a set of data pairs (V the forward bias voltage applied between emitter-base electrodes of the electrical contacts of the bipolar transistor, V a corresponding collector current flowing through a collector electrode which is one of said electrical contacts disposed on said third region, the collector current being I b) obtaining, by using said automated equipment and the previously obtained set of said data pairs (V a first term of a corresponding pair of the previous data pair, V a second term which is a result of multiplying I c) constructing, by using said automated equipment, a graph of (I d) determining, by using said automated equipment, a value of the adjusting parameter T e) outputting, by using said automated equipment, the value of T