Paper-Based Ionic Thermocouples for Inexpensive and High-Precision Measurement of Temperature

초록

Accurate and yet cost-effective temperature measurements are required in various sectors of academia and industry. Thermocouples (TCs) are most widely used for temperature measurements; however, their low temperature sensitivity and high thermal conductivity should be improved to ensure the reliable measurement of output voltage for small temperature differences. To address this, a paper-based ionic thermocouple (P-iTC) presented here utilizes a pair of paper strips soaked with the electrolytes of potassium ferri-/ferrocyanide and iron (II/III) chloride redox couples, which are used as p- and n-type elements, respectively. The fabricated P-iTC provides 70X higher temperature sensitivity (alpha, 2.8 mV/K) and 30X lower thermal conductivity (k, 0.8 W/m K) than those of commercial K-type TCs, thereby yielding a remarkably high alpha/k ratio of 3.5 mV m/W. Reliable sensing performance is measured during three weeks of operation, which indicates that the P-iTC should be stable in long-term operation. To demonstrate the practicality of the P-iTC, a 3 x 3 planar array of P-iTCs is fabricated to monitor the temperature profile of a surface in contact with heat sources. Using pencil-drawn graphite electrodes on paper, a highly cost-effective P-iTC with the material cost of similar to 0.5 cents per device is also fabricated, which is successfully used to monitor cold chain temperatures while retaining its excellent temperature-sensing performance.

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